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Cattle Diets and Nutrition
Domestic bovines don't eat just grass: the diet of a bovine is surprisingly complex and involved with the variety of feeds in the form of forage, grain and byproducts available. But in order to determine the diet of a bovine one must understand the nutritional aspect of the bovine as well--an aspect that has its complexities and variations as well. If you are looking to learn and ask questions about the diets and nutrition of cattle, you've come to the right place.
1,811 Questions
How much urine does a cow's bladder hold?
The average rate of consumption of water ranges from 6 percent to 10 percent of a bovine's body weight per day. Water consumption depends on the animal's weight, the salinity of the feed it is consuming, air temperature, reproductive stressors such as if the animal is lactating or not, age, type (beef or dairy), breed, and others.
How do you bottle feed a baby calf?
A normal beef calf is raised by its mother for the first 5 months of its life. At 5 months of age it will be weaned and raised accordingly with what its future holds for it. If you are trying to raise a beef calf with out the mother you will need to raise it similar to a dairy calf. You will need a 2 quart bottle with a nipple. Twice a day you will need to feed the calf a 2 quart bottle full of either whole milk or milk replacer. Milk replacer is available at most production animal feed stores. You will also have to provide the calf with water from 2 weeks of age on (do this in a pail). The calf will also need to be started on a calf feed as soon as it will start eating to help stimulate rumen development. At about 7 weeks of age the calf will need to start receiving good quality hay. At 8 weeks of age wean the calf from milk. At this point the calf will be fed water grain and hay.
Apples should only be fed as a treat. Apples are quite high in starch and sugars which can induce bloat. Also, since cattle like swallowing feed whole and cannot bite an apple in half nor chew it like a horse would, they can choke on them causing the animal to suffocate and die. Other concerns in the past have been about cattle coming down with what is called ruminal parakeratosis, which is another term for damage and clumping of the ruminal epithelium, which can cause death in cattle. This condition is only from those animals that have been fed a high-apple diet, not from those that have been fed apples as a treat now and then. Little research, however, has been done in the feeding of apples to cattle, so precaution must be taken when feeding this fruit to ruminants.
Apples can actually be fed to cattle as a replacement to corn. They are cheaper to buy by the ton, even though apples are lower in energy (TDN) and higher in crude fibre (CF) than corn is. Check out the related link below for more info.
Is cow manure a good fertilizer for trees?
Cattle manure is good to make any plants grow, grass or not. But, manure is best used in your garden than on your lawn. Manure is also best used out in the fields or spread out in the pastures.
How many feedings per bale of hay?
Please be more specific. What do you mean by this question, are you referring to how long a bale of hay will last when fed to livestock? How many livestock are you asking about? What type or class? What size is the bale, what type, what weight? What does it comprise of (i.e., grass only, legume only, or legume-grass)? All of these questions need to be answered before this question can actually be answered.
How do you make electricity using cow dung?
Cow dung is converted to methane gas which is used to generate electricity. See related links below for more.
How much feed need a cow per day?
The rule of thumb for the amount of protein beef cattle need is as follows:
- The 7-9-11 Rule: Seven percent protein for mid-gestating cows, 9 percent protein for late-gestation cows, 11 percent protein for lactating post-calving cows.
- The 14-12-10 Rule: 14 percent protein for feeder calves weighing 550 to 800 lbs, 12 percent protein for feeder calves weighing 800 to 1050 lbs, and 10 percent protein for feeders weighing 1050 lbs to finish weight. Similar can be said for young cattle (heifers and bulls) being raised as replacements.
For dairy cows, it gets more complicated, as we have to factor in digestable intake protein [DIP] (also known as rumen degradable protein or RDP) and undigestable intake protein [UIP] (also known as rumen undegradable protein or RUP, or by-pass protein) along with crude protein content of a ration, or rather, divide crude protein into RDP and RUP. Typically, though, we should expect to feed around 10 to 12 percent protein in the form of RDP to dairy cows.
Did spanish ranchers graze cattle or horses on the grasses of the haciendas?
Yes, they also mined for silver and gold when there was still gold.
Grain, including corn, barley, wheat, soybean, and rye, is an unnatural diet for cattle. Cattle have evolved to be able to efficiently digest a forage-based diet of grass and hay. When fed a grain diet, besides the benefits of increased weight gain before slaughter and boosting milk production in dairy cows, the bad often outweigh the good, as I mentioned above. When the bad outweigh the good, this means that a grain diet in cattle must be mixed with antibiotics and other additives to decrease the incidence of bloat and acidosis. When slaughtered, many animals that have undergone acidosis (acute and subacute) are found to have lesions or abcesses in their livers. Livers then have to be thrown away, as they are not suitable for food production. Trace amounts of antibiotics can also be found in meat from an animal that has been on a grain-fed diet.
Corn, which is quite high in starch, protein, and carbohydrates like many grains are, is considered a "hot ration" for cattle, and is digested very quickly in the rumen. This quick digestion is often too fast, resulting in maladies like acidosis and bloat. When any of these things happen, most often the animal goes down fairly quickly and dies just as fast. Acute acidosis is the main cause of death in many feedlot and corn-fed dairy cattle, and occurs when the body is overwhelmed with the spike in acid production in the rumen. Those that don't succumb to acute acidosis wander aimlessly around or cannot get up; after they are treated (with thiamine), they can also get what is called chronic acidosis, among other maladies like founder, bloat, and polio. Founder (inflamation of the laminae in the hooves) is often a precursor to acute acidosis, resulting in permanent lameness in the animal. Feed-tested bulls commonly have this problem more than any other animal on a grain-based diet. Bloat is another main cause of death and concern for cattle that have eaten a grain ration; bloat happens when protein digestion in the rumen goes hay-wire, resulting in froth or bubbles of gas that constantly build up in the rumen and are unable to be released through belching. It is often caused by feeding too much grain too soon, and if not treated quickly, the distended rumen, expanding all the time with the digestion of starch, protein and CHO, puts pressure on the lungs to the point where the animal suffocates and dies. Bloat is also found to be a precursor to acidosis. Polio (polioencephalomaladia) is a neurological disease that is often a result of a deficiency of thiamine. Thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down and "uses" thiamine, is often put into high gear when the animal is digesting a high-grain ration which decreases the pH level in the rumen. Hence polio is also linked to acidosis in grain-fed cattle.
Is tripe the stomach lining of a cow?
Tripe is the first or second stomach of a cow and is served in various ways.
Yes! Cows do, in fact, have only one stomach. This stomach is divided into four chambers, being the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. It is common misconception that cows have four stomachs, when they only have one.
No, cow corn isn't good as far as palatability is concerned (at least for human consumers, not cows: cows will readily eat "cow corn"). It is less better to eat than sweet corn, specifically created by plant breeders to meet the consumer demand for corn and its various derivatived products found on your grocery store's shelves.
How much silage does a dairy cow eat daily?
Please provide more information. How many animals are we talking about here? How long are they being fed? Is this on a per-day basis, or is it on a per-month or per-year basis? What is their average body weight and rate of intake in terms of pounds per day? What kind of silage (i.e., grass, barley, corn, wheat, etc.)? What is the moisture content of the silage? All these questions should be answered before we can actually answer the question properly.
What are the benefits of making silage?
Silage is high-moisture and high-nutrient, which makes it optimal for feed (but is easily spoiled if oxygen is allowed into the storage silo)
Silage is also used in anaerobic digestion, where the silage is fed to anaerobic digesters such as Methanosarcina and A. wodii to harvest biogas, which can be then used to generate electricity and heat.
They keep the grass down without the farmer having to turn on a tractor and hook up a mower to mow the grass him or herself. While he or she's got cows eating the grass, the farmer can be free to do other things that need to be done. Plus the grass benefits from the grazing cows, enabling the grass to grow more healthier when it is being grazed; the feces and urine from the cows also aid in grass growth. The deposition of manure leaves the farmer one less job to do as well; he/she doesn't need to spread manure that would've otherwise accumulated in the drylot if he/she had to feed the cows in a drylot instead of having them get their on food out on the pasture.
Are cows both a predator and prey?
No you mess! Cows don't hunt other animals, which is the definition of a predator. Cows are just prey because they are hunted by us humans, so we can eat red meats that come from the cows!
What eats grass that cows eat?
Most any kind that aren't too bitter nor too coarse. They will eat fresh grass, grass dried as hay, grass chopped up and allowed to ferment as silage, or grass baled up and allowed to ferment as baleage.
What herbivore does a cow eat?
Cows eat grass. That makes them herbivores because herbs are plants. They don't eat meat at all, so they can't be carnivores like cats or omnivores like humans.
Roses, as in those flowering plants of the Genus Rosa, are not poisonous to cattle. At least there have been no reported cases of poisoning to cattle when and if they had eaten such an angiosperm.
How much grass does a cow eat to gain a pound?
It all depends on how big she is, how much milk she is producing, what stage of lactation she is in, what body condition she's in (fat, thin, or moderate), breed, age, and nutritional quality of the grass (as determined by growth stage and species that make up the pasture fodder). For this question, we can only use an example.
Say we have a 1200 lb Angus cow in her 3rd month of lactation and she's consuming around 4% of her bodyweight in dry-matter forage (in this case, grass) per day. This calculates out to this cow eating around 48 pounds (1200 x 0.04) of dry-matter forage per day. For as-fed, let's assume that the grass is good quality and at 65% moisture. This means that she is expected to eat around 6% of her bodyweight per day, or 72 pounds of grass per day.
How much grain should your 4 month old calf be eating?
Cereal grain is the best to feed a calf. This includes corn, oats, barley and rye.
