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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
Can a calf eat grass at two weeks old?
No. Their stomachs aren't well developed to consume grass when they are so young. They begin to sample grasses and other stuff Mom eats when they get around a week old. They are fully on grass and other feedstuffs offered to them by the producer by the time they reach between 6 and 8 months of age.
Depends on what the grain is: field corn, field peas, feed barley, wheat, etc. If you're just referring to the word "grain" there really is no special name for such grain that is fed to livestock like cattle...just "grain."
Because cattle are ruminants and cellulose is broken down by the microbes found inside of the rumen and then digested further in the cecum. Humans do not have a multiple-chambered stomach nor a functional cecum, thus making digesting cellulose impossible. Cellulose only acts as a gut filler for humans, which is the main reason why plant matter passes through so quickly (in around 2 hours) in a human's digestive tract compared to meat, and compared to the time it takes plant matter to go through a cow's digestive tract.
Do cows eat lavender Is it bad for them?
Cows will eat lavender, as no toxic or poisonous effects have been found to affect them in any significant way. However, they may not eat it as readily as a goat might.
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.
When to put calves on wheat pasture?
Cows are not put into wheat pastures. They are fed at the diary with grains and other things.
How do you keep a cow from eating grass on the other side of the fence?
Though I will provide somewhat of a "band-aid" solution to the problem, the thing you should know is that this is a sign of poor pasture management. Cows that have enough pasture to graze within the confines of the fence-line will not bother trying to stretch wires or break boards to get at the grass on the other side. If your pastures are grazed to the point where they look like golf greens, you have a big pasture management problem that needs attending to.
Now, the management problem could be either because you have too many animals on your land, or you have no management system in place to allow pastures to rest. However, if you already have a some sort of rotational grazing/management-intensive grazing system in place, the problem may be just in this "sacrifice pasture" you have, and I may be jumping the gun in giving the questioner heck on something he or she is doing right in the first place!
So, what you can do depends on what kind of fence you have. If you got iron panelled fence, I wouldn't worry about it. Iron fencing is strong enough that it won't give away as easily as a 2" x 6" board or wire. If you got board fence, high tensile or barbed wire fencing you may want to do one of two or three things:
1) Run an electric fence that is nose-level with your cattle. Use the electric fence on a problem section of your board or barbed wire fence. With the barbed wire fence, make sure the wire isn't contacting the wire because this could short out the hot-wire and defeat the electric fence's purpose. With the board fence you could nail electric wire insulators to each post. If necessary, put another wire a couple feet off the ground. With the high-tensile fence, it can be electrified so either you have some wires shorting out on something that is not making it more electrified than it should be. Connection with wire from another fence, tall grass, a tree branch, or lack of grounding from your grounding rod are the possibilities of weaker voltage.
2) (This will work also for high-tensile, barbed and board fencing) Run an extra wire or board below the ones that are large enough for a cow's head and neck to squeeze through. Going either along the problem spot or spots may help alleviate the problem.
3) If you are really desperate, or you have an old dilapidated fence that needs replacing, re-wire or re-board the fence so that the wires or boards are closer together preventing the cow to stick her head through. But I wouldn't recommend this since this is much more work than necessary, much more than simply running an electric fence or stringing up extra wire.
How many digestive compartments the cow has?
Mouth, esophagus, stomachs (compartments including,rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum) , small intestine, large intestine, cecum, and finally the rectum.
Why can cows survive on grass and not on humans?
Yes, and No. Cows can survive completely on grass as food, but it would need water too.
What is the stuff called in a cows stomach?
That all depends on what chamber you are referring to! Since a cow has four chambers to its stomach, all four of these chambers look--and even feel--different on the inside. Basically, the inside of the reticulum is a honey-comb structure; the inside of the rumen has papillae, which are similar, but wider and larger, to the villa found in the small intestine, the omasum has many folds covered with villa, and the inside of the abomasum is very smooth, just like the inside lining of our stomach.
yes, a tiger or any other wild animal like lion cheetah can hunt and eat the flesh of cows
Is a cow a consumer or a producer in the food chain?
Cows are at the bottom of the food-chain, since they are herbivores, not carnivores. In contrast, humans would be at the top.
What pollinates dull grass flowers?
Many plants and flowers reproduce by pollination. Dull grass flowers are pollinated by flying insects like bees, and butterflies.
They eat legumes, like alfalfa, laspedenza, trefoil, cicer milkvetch and clover, but these are primarily found on pasture or in hay. All other feeds fed to cattle, from grain to silage to hay, is all made from grasses. Ninety-eight percent of grains fed to cattle come from species of grass that has been modified to produce high volumes of seeds. These grasses are barley, wheat, corn, rye, triticale, sorghum and millet, to name a few. Even though most people believe that the feeding of grain to cattle is not feeding them grass because they are being fed the seeds portion of the plant and not the vegetative portion, these grains still come from grasses.
So, ultimately, the answer is pretty well no.
A bottle calf suddenly refusing to eat is a indicator the calf is ill or starting to become ill. Look for other signs to tell what the problem may be: temperature for infections, cloudy eyes for pneumonia or shipping fever, or runny watery discharge for scours.
Do horses like sweet or salty feed?
Both. Some horses like pellets, some like sweet feed. It is up to you and your horse to decide which feed he likes and which feed provides his nutrient requirements while keeping your pocketbook happy.
What is the body parts of cow and horse used to eat there food?
The horse uses it's long neck to reach for food, it's Vibrissae (Whiskers) to feel for and find food, and it's teeth for tearing the grass and chewing it.
Starting with the sun what energy transformations take place when cows graze in the meadow?
Heat and light energy gets transformed as energy for the plants to grow via the process of photosynthesis. The cows eat the grass, using the grass as an energy source to live and move around. Thus the grass, though indirectly, provides a means of kinetic energy that the cows use to move around and graze in the meadow.
No.
Fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) are hydrocarbons from deep under the ground.
How many acres do you need fur feeder cattle?
It all depends on how many horses you have. You need one acre per horse for forage. So, say you have 6 horses, you need 6 acres.
Water constitutes 80% of a cow's blood, helps in regulating body temperature, and is crucial maintaining organ functions such as digestion, waste removal and nutrient absorption. For nursing and dairy cows, milk is comprised of nearly 90% water and when it is suckled by the calf or removed via vacuum pump to be used as dairy products, that is water lost to the cow that she can't get back unless she drinks water. Water is also lost through sweat, breathing, urination and defecation.
Water is one of--actually the--most important nutrient that cows and cattle need to ensure their growth, lactation and fetal development. Not only is it important production-wise, but it's an animal welfare and husbandry issue that needs to be met of you are to have healthy, happy cows.
