Fantastic article. I didn't realize dairy cows lactated ~60lbs/day or ~3.5% of their body weight. Totally insane. Chickens appear to be this way too -- from some quick research Rhode Island Reds are ~3kg, lay ~300 eggs/year and each egg is ~62g.
The graph at the end ("US milk yield continues to grow, but falls short of its genetic potential") is interesting. If I saw that graph, I would interpret it as dairy farmers overfitting on the genetic yield potential measure, not as something that needs explanations like climate change.
> America’s cows are now extraordinarily productive. In 2024, just 9.3 million cows will produce 226 billion pounds of milk (about 100 million tons) – enough milk to provide ten percent of 333 million insatiable Americans’ diets, and export for good measure.
Is that all the cows in the US? Why tell us how many cows produce 10 percent of demand?
The graph at the end ("US milk yield continues to grow, but falls short of its genetic potential") is interesting. If I saw that graph, I would interpret it as dairy farmers overfitting on the genetic yield potential measure, not as something that needs explanations like climate change.