I wonder how long Mrs Allison (Mailbox, July 11) has spent as a dairy farmer? She appears to speak so knowledgably about the subject that I would expect her to have lots of practical experience – but somehow I doubt it.

However, my husband milked cows for more than 50 years and I was part of the team for more than 20 years. In addition, some of my relatives are large dairy farmers.

I detailed the breeding programme in my last letter, from calving to insemination three months later, through a declining milk yield to drying off for a rest period before calving again.

What Mrs Allison has ignored is my mention of the careful attention to nutrition so that both the growing calf and the milk yield is catered for.

During the period of heaviest yield, the first three months, the cow is not pregnant – indeed it is almost impossible to get her pregnant if her yield is still very high.

Their feet can be a problem, but careful attention to breeding only from those with sound feet eliminates those with the worst record.

And again, they receive appropriate treatment – a cow with sore feet, just like us – is not a happy individual and her milk yield will suffer. The same with mastitis.

Milk is a wholesome and nutritious part of our diet; we use lots of it and either we drink the milk or the calf does.

It is vital that the calf suckles for several hours as the first milk, called colostrum, contains antibodies that protect it from infections.

I can vouch for the fact that neither calf nor cow is unhappy for more than a few hours when they are separated soon after birth – leave them together for a week and they grieve for days.

The fate of the heifer calves is either to be reared as herd replacements if they are pure-bred dairy calves or for beef if the crossing bull was of a beef breed.

The bull calves of some extreme dairy breeds (Holsteins or the Channel Island breeds) have no value and yes, they may be slaughtered soon after birth, but if they are beef crosses they too will be reared for beef.

Yes, cows have a relatively short productive life, but if we kept them for 20 years, they wouldn't give much milk. I stand by my description of "hard-worked but cosseted" and I invite Mrs Allison to take an opportunity to visit a yard-full – or a field-full – of well-fed cows and declare that they are not contented and happy individuals.

My opinion of the spread of TB to cattle by badgers was not biased – it was fact. If, country-wide, the badger population was reduced by 50 per cent it would prevent the unnecessary slaughter of 25,000 TB-infected cattle per year.

If Mrs Allison is so concerned about the welfare of cows and their short lives surely she ought to agree to the killing of a few badgers to protect that many cattle?

We got on top of the problem of TB in cattle in the 1950s to the 1980s by strict culling of TB reactors and because the badger population was of a much smaller size. We could do it again if given the means.

Wendy Warren, South Kilworth.