Day in the life
Sleeping. Fresh bedding daily (or even more often).
Eating. With constant access to food and clean water, cows spend up to eight hours a day eating.
Chilling in the shade. Freedom to move around – in barns designed to control temperature or in the pasture when the weather is nice. ⛱️
Gettin’ scritches. Scratcher brush is self-care.
Regular vibe checks. Frequent vet checkups plus once daily or multiple daily checks from the farmers.
Maybe a pedicure. Hoof trimming for health. 💅
Getting milked. It sounds weird, but they actually like it. We usually schedule two or three milkings per day, or some of us have robotic milkers that let each cow decide when she wants to be milked.
What I eat in a day
A cow eats up to 100 pounds a day: a mix of plants chosen by a nutritionist and specialized for each cow’s time of life.
The typical recipe
- Forage
- Grain
- Mineral supplements
- Protein-rich feeds like soybean meal
What’s forage?
High-fiber plants, like hay and types of grasses. There’s also silage (grass that’s chopped and fermented to lock in nutrients) for the winter.
🌿And all that stuff that we can’t eat, they can. Then they turn it into milk – and by extension, queso. 🧀
