A Cow's Diet Is Complex

Grass, Grains, Fiber and Water Are Key

To put it simply:  milking cows need quite a bit of nutrition.

Cows need a balanced diet. Grass is absolutely on their menu at our farm. It’s just not all there is.

On our dairy, the cows are fed a nutritionally balanced diet year round.  This organic mix includes organic grains such as corn, flax meal, wheat, soy meal, and rice bran; silage (which we grow ourselves) and alfalfa hay.  All feeds are certified  organically grown and tested for GMOs.

Silage is feed that is cut while green and naturally fermented to retain its high nutritive value over time.  Siilage can be many things and is different in different parts of the country and on different farms.  You can see silage being stored on dairy farms around the country, usually under big tarps or inside huge tunnel-like bags.  The cut material ferments over time to create a kind of cow's version of cole slaw. They love it!  And, it's very nutritious.  It's good stuff.

There has been a lot of talk about both the benefits to people of drinking milk from grass-fed cows and the greater humanity in allowing cows to graze.  We often are asked if our cows are out on the fields all year long, if they eat just grass, and how grazing, feeding and nutrition decisions are made.

Feeding grass alone is not possible in our area because grass does not grow year around. And standing out in the fields when they are soggy doesn’t make the fields or the cows happy.

Depending on where a farm is located and on local weather patterns, good pasture will be available from 1.5 months to 9 months of the year in the U.S.. On our farm, located on the coast of Northern California, we get approximately 4-6 good months of grass.  Cows love grass.  When the cows are let out onto the fields in the spring, when the rains let up, you should see them jump, scamper and skip -- seriously.

Every year in late spring,  the rains stop, fields everywhere dry up, grass stops growing  and the nutritive value of the grass plummets. At that point, we continue to keep our cows in the fields. They continue to graze but their diet is supplemented with a balanced mix of organic grains and silage, in order to give them the nutrition they need.

By November, the rains begin and the fields get more and more muddy, even with a lush crop of grass growing on them. Once it gets too wet, we bring our cows into open-sided barns, where they have individual clean stalls. They can walk around or lie down... whatever they like.  Keeping cows on the fields when the ground is saturated is bad for the fields:  tramping in the fields causes erosion.  Standing or lying in wet fields can cause foot or teat infections in the cows.