Can cows eat too much grass?

Answer 1

This is dependent on many factors like the following:

• Type of bovine (i.e., Beef or Dairy? Lactating or dry? Pregnant or open? Breeding or feeder? Young and growing or old and maintaining weight?)
• Sex of bovine (i.e., bull or cow, steer or heifer)
• Body condition of bovine (i.e., thin or fat or normal?)
• Size and weight of bovine
• Age of bovine
• Length of grazing period
• Pasture quality (i.e., poor or excellent)
• Moisture content of grass
• Nutrient quality of grass
• Soil quality
• Type of grasses grazed (i.e., tame or native and species)
• Climate
• Topography/geological factors
• Location

For this reason, we cannot answer this question. We can answer how much grass a bovine eats per day (see the related question below), but not how much per year.

However, in an ideal and perfect world, here is an example of how much a cow can eat per year:

One 1000 lb cow (dry, open) is on Meadow-Brome pasture that has an average moisture content of 70%. The average daily consumption of such a cow is 25 lbs of dry matter (DM) per day. And, there are 365 days per year.

Moisture content of grass:

Moisture content = 70%

Dry matter content = 100% - 70% = 30% / 100 = 0.3

Since we already know the daily consumption of the animal, we calculate the as-fed daily consumption value:

Amount of forage consumed per day (lb) on an As-Fed basis = 25 lb/day / 0.3 = 83.333 lb per day

Now we calculate the yearly as-fed consumption value:

83.333 lb per day x 365 days = 30,416.666 lb per year.

Thus, in an ideal world, a cow will consume under 30,500 lbs of grass per year. However this number varies considerably if you take in account all of the factors listed above.

Answer 2

A cow doesn't eat grass one blade at a time, rather they wrap their tongue around as many blades of grass as possible and pull them into their mouths to tear off, chew briefly, then swallow. How many blades they actually take depends on the species of grass. The bigger the leaves, the less blades are going to be taken. For example, if a cow were eating reed canary grass, tall fescue, or smooth bromegrass, she would be grabbing less number of blades than if she were eating Kentucky bluegrass, meadow bromegrass, or creeping red fescue. The first set of species are not longer but wider than either of the latter species. Now, usually one handful of grass equals one mouthful for a cow. When I pick a handful of, say, smooth bromegrass, I would have grabbed an average of 40 blades per hand-full. A cow normally grabs one mouthful every second every second. If she grazed for a full hour (=3600 seconds) with no rest to either look up or to chew and swallow for a couple seconds every 15 seconds of grazing activity, approximately, then she could possibly consume 144,000 blades of grass per hour. If we take into those rest intervals, she could graze closer to 120,000 blades of grass per hour.

Answer 3

All of them.

Answer 4

No.

Answer 5

two