I must admit I, for one, can't see how this was supposed to "shock the vegan world" in any way, shape, or form.
I assumed you copied the title from the original, so no blame from me, but it is 'clickbait' IMO.
There's no "shock" to be found here....unless the herd exploding was accidentally cut out, in which case you need to fix it! ;-)

I'm really curious what he meant by 'shock' in the first place...are we to be shocked that a vegan can write vegan poetry?

True, most meat doesn't come from ethical farms. That problem can be solved with one's wallet fairly simply by not buying factory meat.
You misunderstood. She doesn't eat the cows that died from old age, she kills older, but not elderly cows, but many of her herd die of old age and I'm not certain what she does with those.
Yes, but eating meat is far from kicking dogs. If people raised and butchered their own meat, it would be closer. Hiding from the horror that created your food is normal practice for most, you won't change that, so realize people are imperfect and work with what you've got to do the best you can, don't insist on perfection and nothing but, and you'll get more done.
My reason, I like meat. I consider the implications of my actions and try to minimize the damage they cause, but as I said, I did my part for the eco system, so I have a 'get out of morality jail free' card on the ecological implications, and try to not have others abuse animals in my name, but my idea of abuse differs from yours.
I think meat (EDIT: good meat, not processed or hormone/antibiotic rich factory meat) is healthy in moderation. I've read many papers that agree with that, as did my doctor.
If animals aren't 'exploited', they won't get to live....so....
Sounds like reasons to not have children, not reasons to not eat meat. I did that, so I get to have chicken. You had kids, no meat for you. Fair?
A good reason to eat meat....it tastes good in my food hole. That's all I need. ;-)

Are farm animals purchased (or bred) with the intention of making money. Yes. Does that mean their well being and happiness is not a concern? Absolutely not. Even factory farmers would admit that happier, healthier animals are more productive (grow faster) and are better quality. It does take more money and effort to farm that way, and is not scalable, so corporate farms go for the quicker dollar at the expense of the animal, usually. That doesn't mean all farms operate that way, with profit being the first and only concern.
And no, it's not 100% certain farmed animals will die young or be abused. For instance, when we raised cattle, we allowed the herd to roam and breed naturally, took good care of them, and many died of old age before we sold off the herd. My aunt still raises her own beef with I think <10 cows, and they often die of old age because she can't eat all she raises, they live happy lives. In factory farms, you're likely correct.
My point is, if you really want to make a difference in reducing animal suffering, I think you would have more success trying to convince people to buy free range, non hormone meats from good smaller local farms with good reputations for proper animal treatment over attempting to convince them to give up meat completely. It's a matter of how much people are willing to change, and getting the best outcome possible for the animals, right? I think convincing meat eaters to go vegan is a non starter 99% of the time at best.

And to answer the above morality question, would it be immoral for you to do that to my dog? Yes. Would it be immoral for ME to do it to my dog? I guess that depends on many things, like if he's used completely as part of the early termination (eaten, worn, etc.), is he euthanized painlessly and without fear, etc. ...but I liked Logan's Run, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask those kinds of morality questions. ;-)

Your video, Drone's Eye View of Sheep Herding, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Again, you either ignore or are ignorant of the social needs of baby elephants....even though I've explained it repeatedly. Baby elephants NEED social interaction constantly, without it they usually die.
Often a herd will not accept a baby back. I'm not saying they shouldn't have tried, but it's not always possible. It's actually likely they did try and it was rejected, since they seemingly knew which herd it came from.
Keeping it outside as close to what nature would be like means someone or a few someone's need to live outside with it 24/7. Leaving it outside alone is almost certain death.

Again, this woman has spent her life rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned and injured animals successfully. I'm pretty sure she knows what that baby elephant needs more than you or I, and she's clearly the best option they have available. Yes, perhaps it's not the perfect solution to make it comfortable around people, but elephants are not wolves. Baby elephants are NEVER left alone in the wild. You can't just make them afraid of humans as infants, they need someone to care for them and they NEED interactions with others.

In this case, it seemed like there was a choice. Either take in this baby and treat is as a baby, with all the social needs a baby has, or don't treat it as a baby in need of constant contact and let it die. Neither is a perfect solution, but saving it is the preferable one. Perhaps it won't be able to be re-introduced to the wild because of how it's being raised...that's better than just letting it die IMO, which I see as the only alternative to her care.

Admirable indeed it is to save a life, any. But this is not the issue, the issue is HOW she "saved" it. Allowing the elephant to be boss inside the house is not equipping it for the rest of its life unless it will become the alpha in her house for the rest of its life.

So onto my original premise: liberals are short sighted:
She did make a choice to save the elephant and as we all agree this was a noble and admirable thing but short sighted in not seeing beyond the immediate good feeling for rescuing an elephant that it needs to be prepared for the rest f its life and short sighted in letting it into the house in the first place not seeing that that would establish a precedent would not be realistic in the future.

So... she should have saved it from the water yes, taken it home perhaps if it needed medical attention, but the ideal would have been to return it to its herd. They would have received it. So if the herd was not found then keep it outside as close to what nature would be like until it could be re-introduced to the wild.
So when you rescued all those animals did you let them sleep with you? Eat food out of your plate? Let them run wild and do whatever they like? I'm sure to a degree yes but as a whole no.

By the way thank you for saving those animals.

Um...no....I don't see that.
First, what would your alternative be, knowing that baby elephants NEED a family structure to thrive, and often just die when they don't have one? Would you just put it in a cage with no contact and just hope it survives? Bad idea.
I see she is doing this because baby elephants need this interaction from a 'family' unit, or they either wither and die or survive, but become rouges that have never known herd life in any way and are problem elephants that get shot.
If it were all about herself at the animals expense, why are the other less social animals not brought onto the porch? I'll answer, because they don't need to be.
Perhaps before calling out the behavior of those who's life has been spent successfully rescuing, rehabilitating, and reintroducing to the wild abandoned and injured animals you should do a little research on what those animals require?

It's not all dairy farms, but it's most. See http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/430528/err47b_1_.pdf or page 7 of http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/nass/sb/sb978.pdf (note my requirement of .edu not some blowhard blogger).

Namely:
The number of dairy farms with fewer than 500 cows (your "good places") has decreased significantly and the number with more than 500 has increased majorly. And those farms with more than 500 account for 50% of the milk made.

So, yeah. There are some good farms out there. But the number is shrinking and they're unable to compete with the large factory farms.

Also, from one of the docs cited above:
In 2000, about 71.1 percent of production came from
operations of 100 or more cows, up from 55.2 percent
in 1993. Production from the smallest herds, not a
large share to begin with, fell by about half—from 4.1
to 2 percent

---

Rather than refute any of the other claims above, I'll just leave it at this. I have vegan exhaustion. My point is that these aren't just made up vegan facts from PETA, these are studies by the USDA.

Kinda sorta, but it's pretty safe to assume that the gov has a finger in every pie somehow. I do think, however, that the inspiration for this latest move has come from the companies though, not the gov. China has never been shy with the stick over the years, I reckon it's the money makers that talked them around to letting the sheep herd themselves.

Your video, Elephant herd attacks motorbike in Thailand, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Great destruction of 1 evil group against another evil group.

Best to let the herd thin itself out.

Your video, Pekingese herding sheep., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The title really should be "Tribble herds sheep"

with political correctness and collectivism group think destroying individualism and making individualism a bad word labeling them "racist, misogynist, intolerant,etc" the world is slowly turning into what was seen in the movie "Idiocracy".

Now you add this type shit to mix and you will have the mentality of Idiocracy combined with the culture of humans shown in Wall-E.

Herd of like minded tolerant sheep fatties on hoveround mobility scooters.

Goddamnit Dave, stop being so fucking awesome, you're making the rest of us look bad!

Also... so many drummers...must've been like herding cats