Bella's here!!! Does not know what to do with the grass!

[woodsie]

Well Bella and her calf Beef are home and we are all getting used to each other....but I am noticing that she is definitely not used to being on GRASS! I purchased her from a dairy and she's a very sweet cow but she is having a hard time adjusting to her new feed. She was on a whopping 14lbs of grain a day and basically wants to eat grain and laze around for the rest of the day....the calf on the otherhand is thrilled to go running through the grass and check out the field, meanwhile Bella is bellowing cause she can't find him in the tall grass at the end of the field.

I am still giving her about 10lbs of grain a day and I have hay for her, which she is eating, but she is barely touching the lush green grass....here I was thinking she might bloat by tearing into all this grass but she has barely touched it. Will she eventually get the taste for fresh grass? She had run out of hay yesterday and she was moooing at the fence...I gave her more hay and she happliy started munching (btw its not great hay, last year's grass hay) and quieted down. She's mooing for not great hay surrounded by beautiful grass! How can I get her switched over to grass as I want to have grass-fed milk and cut down on the grain?

The milk is amazing and ABUNDANT! I can't possibly milk her dry, although I do my best to try but we all get a little bit tired after 6 litres in 15 mins twice a day. THank goodness for the calf that helps to relieve the milk but she still has more!

 

[Allison]

I think she will eventually start eating the grass more. Once she is eating grass and less grain her milk production will go down a bit too.

 

[jhm47]

First of all, not all grass is created equally. Some is excellent feed, palatable, and nutritious. Other kinds are coarse, bad tasting, and have little to no feed value. In my area, bromegrass is quite prevalent. It is palatable and fairly nutritious while it is in the growth stage in early spring. After it heads out, it gets coarse, stemmy, and the cows don't like it. It also has little nutritive value when mature. Cattle know instinctively whether a particular kind of grass is good for them, and if it has little feed value, they will resist eating it.

I would worry about your cow if she's in full milk, and you change her diet from a high concentrate one to mostly grass. She likely will lose a lot of weight, and will have a hard time getting bred for her next calf. Better to leave her on her present diet till you dry her off, and then start her on the protocol you prefer. After she calves next time, she will better adapt to a diet lower in nutritive density. Good luck!

 

[woodsie]

I did see her out in the grass today and I am still feeding her grain and hay but would like to reduce her HEAVY grain output, not cut it out all together. I am trying to get healthier food for our family, hence getting a milk cow, and having a cow that is primarily on grain in my opinion is not the healthiest option for the milk or the cow....although I am not complaining about the massive amounts of cream I am getting. YUM!

I tried some first cut grass/alphafa hay and she seems to like it better even if it is quite stemmy so I'll see if I can get some more of that hay and feed the grass hay to the goats this winter.

As for the pature, I'm not sure exactly what kind of grass it is but my goats and lambs did really well on it last year....and this year it looks much better....however it is very long and going to seed, I rotate the pasture and ended up working too well, the goats couldn't keep up. I have kept watering it and it hasn't gotten dried out so it is still tender and the calf seems to enjoy it. I also have bunch of alphafa in the back of the field but it also has a lot of mustard weed in that area too. I guess we will have to wait and see if she gets a taste for munching the green stuff.

I also thought about tethering her in an area with different kind of grass and see what happens.

 

[bubba1358]

Not sure about cattle, per se....BUT.....

My 3 sheep were bottle fed when I got them. I ran them on grass right away, but they sat there waiting for their next bottle. Then I gradually decreased the amount of milk. The first day after I dropped a bottle from the routine (3 down from 4), the bleated wildly but got the hint - day after, they were munching the grass like it was going out of style.

You could try cutting a half pound of grain a day until you reach a more acceptable level, leaving the dry hay alone. She should get the hint soon enough. Especially if your other guys were doing well on this grass, the ol' girl is probably just accustomed to the grain and needs some, er, motivation to start on the grass.

 

[Cricket]

Did she come from a dairy where the cows never go out to pasture? We had some boughten cows where I used to work that had never been out to pasture. They never really enjoyed the concept, but got used to it somewhat. As JHM said, I wouldn't be in a big hurry to switch over. I'm not familiar with western pastures, but here if you mow now they really like the new grass that comes in. I wonder if you mowed a few swathes with a scythe or weed whacker and let her clean that up if she'd get the concept?

Best of luck!

 

[treeclimber233]

I bought a milk goat from a dairy that sounds just like your cow. She stands at the barn screaming for food while there is green grass up to her knees in the field. The first year I had her I thought she would eventually learn to go eat the grass. If I took her out and tied her in the field she ate like there was no tomorrow. But she would not go out by herself. (by that I mean under her own power) I have other goats that go out by themselves but not this one. The next year I cut down on her food as some on here suggested but that did not help either. All that accomplished was her getting very skinny and drying up. This year I decided to separate her from the herd and feed her separately. I have another goat that leads everyone else out to the pasture. I realize now that this dairy goat may never learn to go eat on her own. I do agree that you should not change her diet quickly but reducing her grain over a period of time will reduce the amount of milk she is making. Also how old is her calf. As he gets older he will drink more milk to the point that unless you separate them you will not get much milk.

 

[woodsie]

Well I thought I should update this thread. We did end up weedwacking most of the field and the grass is regrowing nicely and Bella is now eating pasture! I still give her half a bucket of grain at each milking which she loves and some hay to keep her busy while I finish milking but she's eating the grass and seems to enjoy it. She's out in the field munching away so I am thrilled that she got the hang of it instead of laying around in her shed.

Milking is going well although my calf is a total glutton so I am going to start seperating them for the day (they will still see each other through the fence) so I can get one full milking instead of two piddliy amounts....the amount of milk can really vary from 2 liters if the bugger was particularily thirsty to 6 liters from 2 quarters he didn't touch....quite the diference so it will be interesting to see if I seperating them for the day how much milk there really is.

I am looking for a milking machine for winter however as I will be huge and not thrilled with the idea of spending 20 mins in the freezing cold, even if it takes just as long to clean at least I can clean it inside! Any recommendation of the best kind of milker for one cow?

 

[Cricket]

on the grass! I think you may be in for a huge surprise when you start separating your calf. My heifer freshened a week ago today. On day 2, I got almost 20lbs a.m. and p.m. with the calf feeding. By day 4, I was down to 8.25lbs. I started separating at night and this morning I got 14lbs and left some for the calf. It still doesn't seem possible that a calf can consume that much without scouring--I'm usually lucky to tweak them up to a 2 qt bottle twice a day!

I have a Surge belly milker that I inherited. I'm pretty rugged, but it's heavy and rather awkward to take off the cow--it hangs by a strap around her. PattySH has a photo on here somewhere of her rig, which has longer hoses so you don't hang it. It works fine for me if my heifer is behaving, but the first few days of duckwalking around holding the milker outstretched was rather challenging. I would look at the portable bucket milkers if I were you--they look to be wicked expensive, but imagine they'd last a lifetime and would perhaps have a good resale value.