As someone who spent quite a bit of time in cattle country in Canada, I can say that your intuition is right. People living by these animals do truly tend to care are about them. On the other hand, killing them is central to their entire way of life and the core of their economy. Without the animals, there would be no rural for much of Canada. Additionally, the difficulty of even modern rural life seems to create a certain hardness that is okay with animal death/suffering and that hardness exists alongside their love for their animals.
As someone who spent quite a bit of time in cattle country in Canada, I can say that your intuition is right. People living by these animals do truly tend to care are about them. On the other hand, killing them is central to their entire way of life and the core of their economy. Without the animals, there would be no rural for much of Canada. Additionally, the difficulty of even modern rural life seems to create a certain hardness that is okay with animal death/suffering and that hardness exists alongside their love for their animals.