- Cattle digest fibrous feed in their 3 fore stomachs – rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum which is the true gastric stomach.
- Digestion of fibre produces Carbon dioxide and methane.
- Cattle divide their day into periods of:
- Grazing – taking in feed using their prehensile (grasping) tongue and bottom teeth. Feed goes into the rumen via the abomasum (honeycomb bag) where heavy objects collect.
- Chewing. The feed is chewed, formed into a bolus with saliva (100 litres/day) and swallowed.
- Rumination. Here feed is given time to ferment in the large rumen.
- Regurgitation. This is where the bolus is belched up again for the second mastication of 300 chews.
- Swallows feed again into the omasum (the butcher’s bible) for final grinding.
- Then passage into the abomasum for gastric digestion.
- Idling. The cow stands appearing to do nothing. It’s time of rumen fermentation.
- Resting – lying down
- Drinking. A milking cow drinks on average 70 litres of water per day.
- Sleeping. The cow sleeps for short periods during the night.
- Dairy cows have to spend at least 8 - 10 hours/day grazing to meet their nutritional needs.
- They are driven by "metabolic hunger" or the need to eat to meet their genetic urge to lactate.
- A cow makes between 30,000 and 40,000 grazing bites/day.
- Our modern dairy cows have been bred for this kind of life which many welfarists are now questioning.
- If they don’t eat enough, they use up body reserves and get thin. This then triggers problems like anoestrus (non-cycling) and farmers use intra vaginal devices and inductions to control their breeding activity, both of which have negative welfare images in the marketplace.
- Details
- Written by: Dr Clive Dalton
