Cattle Diets and Nutrition

If the cattle were raised on pasture, in a 24 hour period, they can graze around 18 to 20 hours a day.

Cows stomach is a smooth muscle since smooth muscle is found mostly in the walls of hollow organs.

The proper answer to this question would be nine. However, in reality, when a bolt of lightning hits them, they wouldn't just stand around acting dumb, they'd take off running for their lives, leaving ZERO cattle standing.

Free range farming when it involves chickens can mean many different things. It can mean the hens are not kept in cages but in a large building, it can mean they are allowed into an outside wired enclosure or it can mean the chickens are loose to wander all over the farmyard. many people believe the free range hen is happier and thus produces better quality eggs. Farmers often charge more for a free range egg than one from a battery farm or intensive egg production facility. Free range of any kind means the animal leads a life closer to its natural environment doing what it does best.

If you want true free range meat look for a grass fed or pasture raised label.

As long as it takes. A beef cow is a mature female bovine that has had a calf, and, depending on how old she is when you first purchase her, she may last for 5 to 10 to maybe up to 20 years, depending on how productive she is and how well you take care of her.

This all depends on where they live, how they are raised, what they are fed and how they are fed. Normally cattle will graze for several hours during the daytime, then loiter around chewing the cud for a couple of hours before going out to graze again. Cattle can see during the night so they will also often be out grazing at night, though most of the time they spend the time resting.

Some cattle do not have the luxury of being able to go out and graze, so they have to depend on the routine schedule of when they will be fed. Cattle in the feedlot are often fed twice a day, and when they are fed that's the time to eat. During the winter months, in areas where snow and cold hinder the ability of cattle to graze, they are also fed or, in some areas, winter grazed on swaths of forage or bales of hay. Most ranches and farms that feed their cattle in the winter or bale/swath graze then only do it once a day or once every two to three days. Cattle still have their own routines of when they get up to eat and when they sleep.

What time heavily-pregnant cows are fed can determine when they will calve out. Often feeding at night will encourage cows to calve during the daytime, making it easier for the producer to go and check on his/her cows.

A cow has a four-chambered stomach that digests plant matter more efficiently than a human's. Cows are called ruminantsbecause they are able to regurgitate partly digested material and rechew it again. A human, on the other hand, has a simple stomach, and is a part of the single-stomached group called monogastrics, which all have one simple stomach designed to digest protein and carbohydrates, not fibrous plant material.

A Brahman cow will eat 2.5% of her body weight in dry matter ration per day. When she's lactating, she will eat 50% more of this amount per day, which is 4% of her bodyweight in DM ration per day.

Yes, they can. An herb is a plant that is valued for its flavour, scent, medicinal qualities, etc. Grass, though an herbaceous plant, is technically not an herb, not the kind of herbs that are used in culinary arts and holistic medicines. It is a botanical herb, as the definition for a botanical herb is any plant that is non-woody, regardless of its flavour, scent or medicinal properties.

u should give them the cattle cake

Because they'd have nothing else to eat. Cows have to eat all the time, no matter what season they're in. Hay is better for their digestive systems than grain is, since hay is simply dried legumes and grass that has been cut and harvested by man. Hay is only fed when cows cannot graze on pasture, especially in the winter and early spring when the grass is too short to be eaten.

Depends on what your butching for or how you like your meat and what time of year it is. here are some examples that i have used 14% Sweet feed = more fat build up but only use in cooler season or climate Cattle sweet feed = med fat build up can be used anytime Corn chops = leaner meat use any time Creeper Pellets = leaner meat use anytime

No. The fact that humans "can eat almost anything" is pure myth. If we "can eat almost anything" why do we turn up our noses at eating our lawn and instead, when we use lawnmowers to cut it, we leave the grass clippings to rot in the lawn or pile them up in big garbage bags and letting them go to waste in the landfill? Why do we turn up huge plots of green, healthy grassland to grow crops? Why do we think it's gross to try to eat hay or silage that cows like to eat? And finally, why do we throw away so much food that could otherwise be used to feed a growing human population, especially those things that "needed" to be thrown out by bakeries and restaurants? Most of the bakery waste goes to feed livestock, not humans.

In the case of corn, we humans can only eat the kernel portion of the whole corn plant, and ONLY when it is at the perfect stage (what we farmers call the "milk stage"). We leave the leaves, stems, and cobs to waste. Why? Because we don't want to eat it. So what do we do with it then? Well, either we leave it to waste, or feed the left overs to livestock, like cattle. If the corn kernels are at any other stage, their deemed as "unsuitable for human consumption." Hmm, I wonder why?? Corn kernels that have reached full maturity (seeds are as hard as a rock, in other words) cannot be eaten straight off the corn plant like cows can. It has to be milled, ground up, and separated, and then mixed in with other ingredients then baked or cooked before it can really be eaten by humans. In other words, we humans don't eat wheat nor corn flour straight out of the sack. The stuff that's separated from the corn kernels (and wheat seeds) doesn't go onto human plates; it goes as livestock feed.

And again, with the corn PLANT that has reached full maturity, we still leave the dried up corn stalks to waste. And like I mentioned before, it either decomposes into the soil, or is eaten by cattle if the farmer lets them to do some "clean-up" in his fields.

Root vegetables like turnips, carrots, potatoes and yams are only eaten as that: root veggies. Do we eat the tops of these plants? No, of course not. Like the corn plants, we leave them to rot. Lettuce and spinach leaves that go bitter are left to rot. Peas and bean seeds that mature to hard seedlings are not eaten by humans; the whole plant of peas and beans, as well as peanuts, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, etc. are not eaten by humans either.

We humans can eat almost all parts of an animal we kill for meat, except for the bones and hide. But plants? We're a bit more pickier than that. Humans have a Gastro-Intestinal tract that is called Monogastric. Monogastrics have a simple stomach that is more designed for the efficient digestion of proteins, be it animal or plant, than for the digestion of other more tougher plant material commonly found in things like grasses, legumes, and most other plant material that we humans turn out noses up at. Fibre can be eaten by humans, but it doesn't give us much nutrients except helping with bowel health. Grain that is suitable for cows would simply pass through us because our stomachs are not designed to break down the tough material. Where cows would get fat on grain and grass, we'd starve to death on it.

Cattle, on the other hand, are ruminants, or animals that have a stomach with four large compartments. Cattle have these stomach chambers because they commonly eat a more fibrous diet of grass and legumes. The rumen is solely responsible for the breakdown of this fibrous material contained in plants through a digestive process called fermentation. Fermentation is able to break down lignin, cellulose, hemi-cellulose and fibre that is found in the cell walls of all plants, enabling nutrients to be released that the cow needs. The Omasum absorbs the water from the digesta in the rumen, and the Abomasum, the true stomach of the cow, is where protein digestion occurs, similar to that in other Monogastrics.

Cows can be picky eaters too, but they are not nearly as picky as humans are.

Bake it so that all the moisture goes out of the feed. Then measure using a weigh scale. When you have both the weight of the feed before you bake it and after, you can calculate the % moisture in the feed.

It may appear that a cow licks grass but actually it grabs it with its tongue to get it into its mouth. A cow or any bovine for that matter has only the lower set of teeth not the tops so it can't bite hay or grass like a horse.

A newborn will not eat any feed. Calves won't begin eating feed until they're at least a week old. Otherwise, you really need to feed colostrum to a newborn for the first 12 to 24 hours, then gradually switch over to milk replacer. You can introduce feed to a calf early, but don't expect it to eat it all like a mature cow will, because a calf is pretty much like a human in that it is more of a monogastric than a ruminant. This means that a calf needs to rely much more on milk than feed for the first few weeks of its life.

I am sure that you could, but dairy cows are more valuable to farmers for the milk they produce, not their meat.

Increase in protein content in the hay. The hay may lack a certain amount of protein, so measures have to be taken to increase protein in the hay (and thus in the cows' diet) to meet the cows' nutritional demands.

Plants that are considered poisonous to cattle include the following:

- Water Hemlock

- Rhubarb

- Lupine

- Low Larkspur

- Oak

- Tall Larkspur

- Timber milk vetch

- Death camas

- Greasewood

- Horsebrush

- Rubberweed

- Sneezeweed

- Broomweed

- Chokecherry

- Copperweed

- Desert Parsley

- Halogten

- Loco

- Milkweeds

- Veratrum

Other antiquality factors that must be addressed in feeding cattle include bloat, acidosis, nitrate toxicity, fescue toxicity, grass tetany, sweet clover disease. This is not really directed to the plants the cattle eat, but WHEN they eat them. To prevent bloat, let cattle out on a alfalfa or clover feild when they are not hungry. Also, make sure they have acccess to a bloat block to prevent bloating. To prevent acidosis, introduce a different ration slowly. Nitrate toxicity is prevented when cattle are supplemented with a high energy-based feed with plenty of carbohydrates and vitamin A. Fescue toxicity is only prevented if non-infected Tall Fescue varieties are seeded in along with legumes. Grass tetany can be prevented by not turning animals out onto pasture the first few weeks of initial pasture season. However if this cannot be avoided, supplementing with mineral that contains magnesium sulfate and calcium diphosphate or mixing a salt mix of 2 parts magnesium oxide and 1 part salt is even better. To prevent sweet clover disease, properly cure (or dry thoroughly) sweet clover hay or silage.

It depends on your soil, rainfall and type of grass. The recommendation for Oklahoma is a maximum of 12 acres per cow with native grass. If you plant grass or buy hay you can run more but you have to factor in the price for fertilizer and hay.

They are ruminant animal that have 4 chambers of stomach

Average daily gain is the amount of weight an animal (steer, heifer, bull or cow) gains per day.

In a matter of speaking, yes, but technically, no. Cows have three forestomachs and one true stomach. The "fourth stomach" then would be the abomasum, while the other forestomachs are called, in order, the reticulum, rumen and omasum. It can also be agreed upon, by common knowledge though, that cows have one main stomach with four compartments, thus the fourth compartment would be known as the abomasum.

Such a generic term can lead to very skewed calculations as to how much grain is needed to raise a calf to the lucky number 400 lbs. What if that calf is already at 400 lbs and the questioner doesn't even know it? Breed, age, current weight, type of grain being fed and if there is other feed being fed (i.e., hay, silage, grass) are all things that must be known first and foremost before this question can possibly be answered.