Pedometer data

[The Ruminant]

Has anyone got any hard data on grazing habits, maybe from their cows’ pedometers or similar? What I want to know is, when cows are turned on to fresh, good pasture, how long they graze for initially, then how long they lie down and ruminate for before starting grazing again?

Also is the ‘pattern’ repeated through the day (ie 2 hours grazing, 2 hours rumination, 2 hours grazing etc etc)?

Anyone got any graphs or numbers they can share - ideally I’d like replies from a few different farms in case grass quality, length etc makes a difference.

 

[The Ruminant]

One of the main reasons I want to find out about this is to determine the optimum time to move cattle onto fresh grazing. Whilst looking into mob grazing I met people who moved cattle everything from eight times a day to once every three days. I’m just wondering what would happen in nature. Cow would eat, lie down and ruminate, get up, move to fresh grazing and eat again, but what is the timescale for each of these elements?

i did think of doing an “experiment”, initially by watching them over a few days in the spring. Then I thought I’d get a pedometer or two; then I thought, aha, maybe someone already has the data on their computer....

Anyone?

 

[DrDunc]

All the dairies that are left around here house their cattle 365 days of the year ?

 

[AndrewM]

Identification of possible cow grazing behaviour indicators for restricted grass availability in a pasture-based spring calving dairy system

Precision livestock farming uses biosensors to measure different parameters of individual animals to support farmers in the decision making process. A…

www.sciencedirect.com

Scroll down to the results section, cows had between 6-9 grazings a day with each lasting just over an hour. 12+ ruminations of about 30mins each

 

[The Ruminant]

Identification of possible cow grazing behaviour indicators for restricted grass availability in a pasture-based spring calving dairy system

Precision livestock farming uses biosensors to measure different parameters of individual animals to support farmers in the decision making process. A…

www.sciencedirect.com

Scroll down to the results section, cows had between 6-9 grazings a day with each lasting just over an hour. 12+ ruminations of about 30mins each

Thank you, that is really fascinating stuff and answers a lot of my questions

 

[AndrewM]

Theres lots of good research out there, finding it is the difficult bit.