Do you give your cows enough time to eat?

In a recent webinar, Dr. Rick Grant from Miner Research Institute presented some interesting data showing the interaction between forage NDF and time spent eating by the cow. Some of the key information is shown in Table 1: a) Cows spent more time eating conventional corn sliage compared with more digestible BMR corn silage. b) Regardless of corn sialge types, cows spent more time (about 0.5 h) eating a higher forage diet compared with a lower forage diet.

We know a high forage diet can be beneficial to the cow in many ways, but do you have a suitable dinning enviroment and give your cows enough time to consume what they are able to eat? The time budget is especially chanllenging for herds overstocked at feed bunk or with mixed parity pens.

Make sure your cows have enough time for each activities (Table 2) to allow for optimal health and production.

Table 1: Cows spent different time consume low vs. high forage diets and conventional vs. BMR corn silages.

Table 2: Time budgets of the dairy cow.