A herd's kill-off pattern — most males slaughtered young, females kept for years — is read as dairying rather than meat production. What is the inference chain?

C. Milk requires living lactating females, so males are culled

Only living females produce milk and only a few males are needed for breeding, so the strategy writes itself into the mortality profile. A meat-focused herd culls both sexes at optimal weight, giving a different curve, which is why zooarchaeology can read an economy from a bone assemblage.