What should cows eat

They can turn inedible by-products from human food and fiber industries like citrus pulp, cottonseed and brewers grain into wholesome nutritious milk! Your email address will not be published. What Do Cows Eat? Comments Thanks! Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. People get their balanced diet by eating a variety of foods with different vitamins and minerals. If you eat steak, your body gets nutrients like vitamin B12, zinc, iron and selenium, just to name a few.

If you have a kale salad with your steak, your body enjoys vitamin K and vitamin A. You already know that — but how do cows get all of the vitamins and minerals they need to be healthy? When a Farmer looks at grass, they see nutrition. They know that to get the best meat, you have to have good grass. In fact, grass is so important that college classes are devoted to teaching farmers how to manage it and keep it as healthy as possible.

Cows have a very different digestive system from humans, which lets them thrive on a diet predominantly made up of grass. The biggest difference is in the stomach. For humans, we sallow our food and our stomachs are sort of like a holding tank where digestion begins, and it continues as it goes throughout our body.

When a cow eats grass, it only chews it a little before swallowing. Some people compare the rumen to a large food processor because the rumen has millions of tiny organisms that live there naturally and help the cow get the nutrients it needs from the grass.

Once their rumen is full, cows usually find a place to lie down and then they re-chew their food — this is called chewing their cud. In general, pasture grasses have two stages of growth—vegetative spring growth and mature mid-to-late summer. Usually, the nutrient content is highest during the spring when there is new growth, good temperatures and rainfall. Mature or dormant grass in late fall and winter has much lower energy and protein content and overall digestibility when compared to a spring pasture.

What Do Cows Like to Eat? Article January 7, They learned that most cow diets contain the following: Grass: More than 50 percent of cow feed is actually grass farmers call it hay and silage. While people often think dairy cows are fed a high-grain diet, in reality they eat the leaves and stems from corn, wheat and oats far more often than they are eating grain, like corn kernels.