Having grown up with lots of dairies in my neighborhood, please remember
that the dairy cows are bred for their ability to produce milk and these
traits are valued.  Cows that do not produce or are not "easy keepers" are
not allowed to pass on their poor production genes to animals that will be
bred.  It is like breeding horses or dogs for a certain trait.  If the
animal does not have the trait, it is not allowed to breed and pass on the
less desirable traits.  Remember there are a lot of dairy cows at McDonalds.
If the current dairy cows did birth in the wild, they probably would not
survive the repeat mastitis because they produce way too much milk for the
one calf that they birth.

In humans, many are allowed to reproduce regardless of ability to produce
milk (or now even to carry a baby if surrogacy is used.)  We do not allow
selective breeding for desirable traits in humans (eugenics) although it has
been tried at some of the darker points in our history.  We, as a society
have decided the reproductive freedom is more important that breeding for
desirable traits whether milk production or blond hair and blue eyes.  As
LCs we have to acknowledge that it is possible to be working with someone
that *genetically* cannot produce enough milk.  Until fairly recently (on an
evolutionary time scale) women who did not produce enough milk, by and large
did not have offspring that lived and passed on their poor producing genes
unless they were able to find someone else to feed their baby.  Convincing
someone else to feed their baby may have been in and of itself a desirable
adaptation that was as worthy of reproduction as making milk.

Incidentally, it was also common in the production dairies that I knew of to
"refresh" milk cows by re-breeding them 6 months after their last birth so
long term production is not something that is seen in these animals.
Although cows produce milk after 6 months but it was economically more
profitable to breed them at that point.  (I remember *knowing* that I would
run out of milk at 6 months when I was pregnant with my first.  Fortunately,
LLL taught me differently of I would have probably weaned at 6 months rather
than the x years that he did nurse...)

Linda Pohl, IBCLC
Phoenix AZ
www.ebestfed.com

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