Clover and other types of hays and grasses are an important part of a dairy cow’s carefully balanced diet. But that’s not all they eat – hay is mixed with grain, corn silage and other feeds to create what farmers and nutritionists call a total mixed ration or TMR. This TMR is important because it ensures the cows get proper nutrition.
Cows, just like kids, have a tendency to sort through their meal to pick out their favorite foods (like the grain), so mixing and grinding the feed together makes them eat everything. Every farmer feeds a different combination of ingredients in their total mixed ration depending on what is available to them.
Some interesting foods cows can eat are:
- Almond hulls
- Brewer’s and distillers grains (by-product of alcohol breweries and distillers)
- Cottonseeds
- Citrus pulp (by-product of making orange juice and grapefruit juice)
- Beets
- Molasses (cows love sweet things)
Cows spend about 5 hours a day eatin, and they consume about 100 pounds of feed and drink about a bathtub full of water (25-50 gallons) a day! All of this feed and water travel through the four compartments of a cow’s stomach and ultimately create the safe, nutritious milk we drink. Most people think that cows have four individual stomachs, but they actually have one big stomach with four small compartments inside of it! The four compartments are called the reticulum, rumen, omasum and abomasum.
I know I wish I was lucky enough to have four compartments in my stomach so I could eat lots of treats!
can I feed my cows apple fresh or fermented