Re: Dairy cows can't survive in wild.  Might be the reverse.  

I've first hand experience with a MT dairyman who sold his dairy, bought a cattle ranch with range cattle raised for grass-fed beef on rangeland.  He took two of his best dairy cows so he'd have milk.  He let them fend for themselves on the range -  but they'd come back  in to be milked - calves were taken away, and that's what they  were used to doing.  They did fine for years, subsisting mostly on open range, just staying close enough to come back for a morning/evening treat (bit of grain) and relief of pressure on udders..  

Eventualy, he got tired of hand-milking his pets, so he sold their offspring to a good dairyman - didn't want to sell them for beef.  Those 'dairy cows' from the range. almost died in the dairy operation - they didn't have any resistance to feedlot diseases.

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