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By Robyn Jackson
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Introduction
Diet and Nutrition of dairy cows is very important. Dairy cows can be sensitive animals and they are easily susceptible to troubles when their dietary requirements are not be met or they are being over met.
These troubles can range anywhere between adverse tastes in the milk, decreased milk production, reproduction issues, to body condition problems, and even serious illness if prolonged dietary requirements are not met.
It can be confusing trying to figure out what it is that your dairy cow needs to eat and how much. My biggest recommendation is to ask when you buy her what her diet is. Be sure to ask things like what type of hay or grazing is she eating, what mineral supplements are available to her, what does her grain mix look like and where do they buy it?
Terminology
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Grass fed cows are cows that are not supplemented with grain, but instead take all of their calories from forage. They will still need to have access to minerals.
Total Mixed Ration (TMR)- As you research what you need to be feeding your dairy cow, you may come across this term. Most large dairy farms have a nutritionist that makes up a ration for them. These nutritionists have an extensive understanding of what cows need during different stages to get enough protein, mineral requirements, and energy. Unless you have connections with a dairy farm and will be buying dairy ration directly from a dairy, TMR is not something you will have access to. But don’t worry! Dairy farms have hundreds of cows to look after, you only have one or two and this gives your cows a huge advantage. It means that they get the one on one care and daily assessment.
Body Condition Score (BCS)- Body condition score is a score that you can give your cow at home to determine what her overall condition is. This can be a super useful tool because cows body condition scores will change as their lactation stage changes, and it is very useful to understand if the change is related to nutrition needs not being met, or if it is a normal process of lactation. It can also be a helpful tool to help you troubleshoot and make decisions for your cows care. For example thinking about when to dry her up, what’s her body condition? Having trouble with reproduction, what’s her body condition? It is a great assessment tool that will help you better understand the normal and abnormal physiology of a milk cow.
To learn how to assess body condition, I can not recommend this video by Penn State University enough!
You can also use this chart (Table 2) by PSU to determine if your cows body condition is normal for her stage of lactation.
Some farms make their crops into silage. Silage can be formed from many different types of crops, but it is basically feed that is chopped, and packed tightly into a pit to ferment. This fermentation helps to preserve the nutrients within the feed. As a small homestead with only a few animals to feed, this is most likely not an option that you will be looking at.
Hayledge is an alternative to silage. It is made by baling hay at a higher moisture content than dry hay, and wrapping the bale in plastic to cause fermentation and preservation of the nutrients.
Dry hay can come in many different forms. It can be comprised of field grasses, alfalfa, long stemmed feed such as oats or barley, or a mix of a variety of different grasses. Dry hay needs to be made properly to preserve its nutritional properties. It has the added benefit of being low maintenance to store, and is often the only forage option for people looking to buy off farm feed. Not all hay is equal and as you will see in Zachs haying videos, it needs to be made properly to preserve the nutrients and should be stored properly to keep it in good quality.
Loose minerals are salt and minerals that are in loose form. You have probably seen a salt block before. Salt blocks are commonly used to meet salt and mineral requirements of animals, but they have their downsides for dairy cows. Dairy cows (depending on diet and lactation) have extensive mineral and salt needs, it can take a lot of licking for a milk cow to get the nutrients she needs from a salt block, for this reason loose minerals are the recommended form of mineral and salt supplementation for dairy cows.
Dietary Requirements
Often times the dietary requirements of diary cows are underestimated. A diet fit for a beef cow is not a diet fit for a dairy cow. There are similarities but you have to consider the fact that beef cows are 1)Bred to maintain and or put on bulk weight, 2) They are not working to produce the level of milk that a dairy cow is.
Dairy cows put a lot of energy into milk production and thanks to breeding programs that have focused for a long time on pushing production, rather than maintaining condition on natural foods, many lines of dairy cow are no longer fit for a forage only diet.
The first step of assessing any cows dietary requirements is to look at their genetics and what they are currently being fed. A cow that comes from grass fed lines, will be better able to sustain both her production and condition on forage and mineral supplementation alone.
As we enter into this lesson, be sure to keep in mind that if you have a good thing going, don’t mess it up. Just because some of these things work for my cows, doesn’t mean they are the right answer for your cows. Science and evidenced based diets have their place, but unfortunately most of the resources available to us today, are the resources that have been created for the dairy industry, rather than small homesteads. Nothing beats common sense. I wish we all had an experienced neighbour with a family milk cow that could come over, lean against the barn pole and proceed to tell us what they feed, why they feed it, where they get it and what not to do.
Today we will be classifying dietary requirements into 4 different components; Water, Forage, Grain, Minerals.
Water Requirements
When you consider that milk is about 87% water, it becomes clear why water is the first piece on this list. We all know that water is important but imagine having to sustain your bodily functions while also excreting upwards of 7 gallons of water a day?!
Dairy cows need free choice good quality water and depending on production and heat, can be expected to drink upwards of 25-50 gallons of water a day. It should be free choice as 50 gallons is a lot to drink in one sitting! Your cow will drink often throughout the day and this will help with hydration, production and digestion. If your cow is drinking from untreated water, you can also expect them to receive some of the minerals they need.
It is recommended that you clean your water troughs out frequently to prevent the slime that likes to grow on them. Funny story…. When we first moved to our property, the old owners who were sheep farmers, had a gold fish in the water trough to keep it clean. It was a nice big established gold fish that had been living there for a long time. Shortly after we moved to our property and our cows started drinking out of the trough, the fish disappeared. Most likely scooped up by a bird, but the family joke is that the cows drank it up.
You can assess that your cow is getting proper water intake by;
Production- a sudden drop in production? Go look at the water trough. This winter our cows stopped drinking for the night when the water heater we had in the trough had a short and was shocking them every time they tried to drink.
Testing skin turgor- this is one of my fancy nursing terms, but basically all you want to do is pinch up the hide on her neck slightly, if it drops back down smooth, she is well hydrated, if it stays wrinkly for a few seconds, she is dehydrated.
Overall look- Does she have a shiny hide, nice bright eyes. If the answer is no, this could be a sign she is not drinking enough.
Reference- Take a look at how much they usually drink and use that as your reference point. If it is drastically down one day, start wondering why.
Forage Requirements
Good quality hay or pasture can make or break what supplements you need to feed your cow. Cows grazing on really good pasture, or feeding on high quality alfalfa mixed hay will maintain their body condition and vitamin and mineral requirements well. They will need less supplementation with grain, and though minerals should still be offered, you may notice that they do not choose them as frequently.
You can use the general rule of 30-40 lbs of dry feed a day depending on stage of lactation, size of the animal and quality of the feed. If the feed is higher in moisture, cows will need to eat much more, as it is less weight dedicated to nutrients and more weight dedicated to moisture. As well if the feed is protein and energy deficient, the cow will need to eat more to meet her requirements and maintain body condition.
Because we make a lot of our own feed, we categorize the feed we make into the best quality, down to the least and we make sure to feed a balanced diet of this. We ensure that all of the feed our milk cows receive is the highest quality of what we have. This means when they are not on pasture, they are eating a high quality alfalfa mixed hay or silage. Our most nutritious hay comes later in the year in our second crop.
A cows forage consumption will vary depending on where she is in lactation and vary drastically during extreme temperature fluctuations. During cold spells, feed requirements increase as the cow works to keep herself warm. Alternatively in heat waves she will eat less as she try to stay cool. A dry cow who is not working to produce milk needs lower quality feed, then a lactating cow.
You can monitor her condition using BCS as well as monitoring that their rumens are working properly. A good way to do this is to make sure your cow is chewing her cud. Cud chewing is an important part of a properly functioning rumen. Cows need proper long stemmed fibre to keep their rumens in working order and aid in digestion. Good quality forage that is high in protein ( an example really rich soft feed) but lacks the fibre needed can cause problems so checking that your cow is chewing cud often will help you determine if you have enough long stemmed fibre in your feed.
Grain and Other Supplementation
This category can get very confusing! As I said above, many large dairy farms have a nutritionist on staff to help mix up TMR rations. Because we do not have access to nutritionists that know all of the ins and outs of how to create balanced rations it is up to us to do our best. In this category you want to look at three things. 1) What is your cow not getting from her diet. 2) What are your production expectations 3) What is your cows current diet.
What is your cow not getting from her diet?
What type and quality of hay were you able to source? If you have hay that is mostly comprised of pasture grasses or long stem grasses, and contains very little alfalfa, though it is a good fiber, you may be looking at a forage that is deficient in both energy and protein. It is a good idea to understand that if your hay quality is not what it needs to be, you may have to add things into your cows diets to help them achieve optimal nutrition.
What are your production expectations?
Most dairy farms are working to push production as well as butterfat, and protein content in milk. Luckily genetics and healthy balanced diets are also very good at controlling this.
What is your cows current diet?
Most high producing dairy cows are supplemented with grain. Grain can be used for both maintaining and increasing milk production, as well as maintaining body condition. When milk cows are raised on grain, their bodies can become dependent on it. Milk cows unlike beef cows, put a lot of energy and calories into producing milk, many of them even if they are not getting sufficient calories will still maintain a high production, at the cost of their body condition.
If having a dairy cow that is not reliant on grain is important to you, it is important to source a cow that is used to a grain free diet. Grass fed only dairy lines are available. Of course with this you do most often have to make concessions when it comes to production, but not always! When possible try to look for generational grass fed lines. Cows and Bulls who are good at sustaining condition and production make babies that are good at doing the same.
It is important with this to remember that milk cows are working very very hard to produce milk. There may come a time in even a grass fed cows life, when they are milking off of their back, working so hard to produce milk that they are loosing condition to a dangerous level. In an ideal world a grass fed cow would be fed a high quality forage diet and mineral supplementation, but ideal is sometimes hard to come by, and if forage quality is low one year, or your cows dietary needs change, your grass fed cow dreams may have to change as well.
Grain can be a very efficient source of protein and energy. If you can mimic the efficiency of grain in your pastures and in your hay, then you will have better luck feeding your cow less supplementation.
We feed our dairy cows a 16% dairy ration grain supplement everyday to help them maintain body condition and to promote production, though at a much lower level than a commercial dairy farm.
Dairy rations like this can most often be purchased at feed stores. This 16% dairy ration is comprised of 16% protein, as well as a mixture of energy, minerals and vitamins. We choose to feed this verses mixing up our own dairy ration because it takes the confusing out of it. If you live in an area that does not have pre mixed feed rations at the feed store, you can mix one up yourself. It will take a little bit of research, but here is an article to get you started.
The rule of thumb to determine how much you should be feeding, that I have heard from many different people, is 1 pound of grain for every 3 pounds of milk produced. This of course will be different depending on the feed quality. Higher quality feed means less need for supplementation. Use this rule of thumb and then use body condition scoring to make sure you are on the mark.
Mineral Requirements
I have much to learn when it comes to mineral requirements for dairy cows. At this point, our milk cows diets look like high quality forage, 16% dairy ration supplementation, and a mixed mineral salt block. They are receiving minerals from all three of these areas, as well as from our natural well water.
Cows should always have free choice salt and mineral access. You may also want to offer them free choice baking soda. Baking soda is a buffer for the rumen and if your cow is experiencing a lot of bloat or gas, she may be in need of a rumen buffer. If you leave it free choice, she will feed on it when she needs it.
Blocks are not ideal forms of mineral and salt for cows. You may have heard of the recommendations for feeding dairy cows is loose salt and minerals. The reason for this is that it takes a lot of licking for cows to get the nutrition they need from a block. Mineral blocks also do not allow the cow to pick and choose what her needs are.
Luckily my friend Deanna feeds her cows a very well balanced mineral combination and I have asked her to write a blog post all about what she feeds her cows and how she decides what to feed them.
A Few Other Notes
Dairy cows naturally go through adjustment periods when you change their diets. It is not uncommon for me to notice drastic changes in my milk for a few days surrounding diet changes. For this reason I try my best to make significant diet changes as gradual as possible. For example, am I changing her grain up? I start mixing the new in with the old for a few days to help with the transition. Is this 100% necessary… no… but smoother transitions make everything easier!
Conclusion
We just talked about a lot of different stuff, and I hope that you are not feeling overwhelmed or confused. One of the things that I learned in nursing school was the idea about learning; when you start, you don’t know what you don’t know, but once you learn a little bit more, you realize what you don’t know and it can be really overwhelming! You may be at that point right now where you are realizing that there is sooo much to nutrition! Nutrition is a huge topic and we all have a lot to learn. Luckily we don’t have to know everything! Nature will take care of us. The more good quality natural forage we can feed to our cows, the less we have to supplement them with the more confusing balanced rations.
Thats why in this section I don’t want you to leave feeling confused. I want you to leave feeling inspired. Inspired to learn more about things like rotational grazing, sourcing and making good quality forage, and focusing on learning how to feed your animals with homegrown, locally sourced feed that meets their nutritional needs.
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