This also took me far longer to realize than I’d like to admit:
Cows only need to be milked after a pregnancy. And pregnancies lead to babies. In effect, we’re talking about 5-6 calves over the lifetime of 1 milk cow. Some of those calves will become the next generation of milk cows, but you’re not gonna keep those 4-5 extra calves around. Those will get slaughtered.
So, yeah, consuming milk products directly leads to cows being killed…