Culling - Livestock and Production Animals

Livestock and Production Animals

Since livestock is bred for the production of meat or milk, the herd must be culled to a certain number of production or meat animals a farmer wishes to maintain. Animals not selected to remain for breeding are sent to the slaughter house, sold, or killed.

Criteria for culling livestock and production animals can be based on population or production (milk or egg). In a domestic or farming situation the culling process involves selection and the selling of surplus stock. The selection may be done to improve breeding stock, for example for improved production of eggs or milk, or simply to control the group's population for the benefit of the environment and other species.

With dairy cattle, culling may be practised by inseminating inferior cows with beef breed semen and by selling the produced offspring for meat production.

With poultry, males which would grow up to be roosters have little use in an industrial egg-producing facility. Approximately half of the newly hatched chicks will be male and would grow up to be roosters, which do not lay eggs. For this reason, the hatchlings are culled based on gender. Most of the male chicks are usually killed shortly after hatching.