What Does a Cow Really Do With Her Day?

Did you know that a cow always has her day planned out before she wakes up?  She doesn’t have a planner or a smart phone she can put all her events in.  The cow’s instincts tell her what she’s going to do each minute of the day.  Below is a graph I found which gives actual numbers to a cow’s day (Lee 2010).  Scientists have watched dairy cows closely and analyzed their behavior to figure out how they budget their time.  Her main activities are eating, lying down/resting, walking/standing, drinking/eating and management.  When it says management, that is when she’s getting milked or if she need to have something else done.

As long as the farmers working with the cows don’t mess something up on the schedule a cow generally sticks to her usual pattern.  From my experience on the farm a cow’s day is dived up very similarly to this and she likes to follow it as close as possible.  Executing each part of her day will affect her heath.

On my family’s farm, we watch to make sure the cows are keeping their normal daily schedule.  For example, if the cows aren’t laying down then there might be something wrong with the stalls.  If that’s the case, we would figure out what it is and fix it.  The same thing goes with the feed, if we notice the cows aren’t eating as much or way more we will check everything to make sure nothing has changed.

It’s amazing to think all of the information we can gather now that we know what a cow’s native routine is.  We use these clues to make sure our cows are happy and healthy every day.

Works Cited

Lee, Kathy. “Time Management for Dairy Cows.” Michigan Dairy Review 15 (July 2010).Michigan State University. Est. 1855. East Lansing, Michigan USA. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. <https://www.msu.edu/~mdr/vol15no3/cowtime.html>.