Grass is stapel food for cows. Quantity and quality of the grass influence the amount of milk that is produced by a cow’s udder in an amazing correlation that I was never aware before I started working with biestmilch and the New Zealand style of cattle farming. Cows need grass. This is one of the reasons grass became a very important symbol in grafic design. Hey, Elisabeth (she is my great Manitu) that is why there cannot be enough grass in our biestmilch universe.
Today I got some more scientific information of this interesting topic from the agricultural rural development site in the UK that shows impressively how sensitive cows react to grass.
High quality grazed grass has been shown through research trials to have the potential to support up to 27 litres of milk production. This is only possible under ideal grazing conditions during May as shown in figure A. Actual production from grass will depend on: the stage of lactation of the cows, the quality of the grass, and the weather conditions while grazing.
- Fig. A: Potential milk production from grass and grass dry matter intakes required
Achieving this level of production from grass in practice assumes that all cows in the herd are yielding at least 27 litres.
Date of calving has an important bearing on milk from forage and especially on milk from grass. Figure A. above shows the potential milk production from grass over the grazing season. Assuming that good quality silage has the potential to support up to 15 litres of milk production when supplemented with concentrates and fed to freshly calved cows, figure B shows how a 7000 litre cow calving in October wastes a lot of the potential milk production from forage over the calendar year.
Conclusions: Cows are not just simply eating grass. There is also a very scientific approach to the eating of cows. Science is everywhere you cannot escape it in our Western hemisphere. It is about yields and profits.
