{"id":413,"date":"2017-05-23T16:18:50","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T20:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/?p=413"},"modified":"2017-05-24T12:30:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T16:30:49","slug":"have-you-seen-a-cow-working-overtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/2017\/05\/23\/have-you-seen-a-cow-working-overtime\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you seen a cow working overtime?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Juan P. Alvez | Pasture Technical Coordinator<\/p>\n

UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture<\/p>\n

A recently-completed research project yielded interesting results regarding dairy cows\u2019 productivity and how much time they spent laying in the field.<\/p>\n

Cow\u2019s day time behavioral activities can be roughly divided by: feeding (3-5 h per day); resting (12-14 h); social interaction (2 to 3 h); rumination (7-10 h); water ingestion (30 min) other management activities (2 h) with some of these overlapping.<\/p>\n

Ideally, most cows lay down for over a third of the day. If you see a cow standing while the majority are resting, feeding, ruminating, socializing o drinking water, you must observe its behavior and check whether there is adequate supply of feed, quality water, space or flight zone space.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cows wearing electronic loggers (wrapped in low-hind left leg) for grazing activity<\/p><\/div>\n

In a study performed by a team of University of Vermont researchers* at an organic dairy in Franklin County, Vermont, we verified that cows with longer laying bouts were the most productive.<\/p>\n

We fitted tri-axial accelerometers to eight Holstein dairy cows and studied their grazing behavior during 10 weeks, from June to September over three different diets: in-barn feed, cool season pastures, a warm-season grass (Wonderleaf Pearl Millet).<\/p>\n

We found out that cows differ in lying time. The average lying time was a little over 9 hours (ranging from 6 to 12h). We found no effects of pasture regime on lying time but the higher producing cows had longer lying times.<\/p>\n

In sum, cows don\u2019t work overtime, and they may get more productive when resting for longer time.<\/p>\n

*Research Team: John Barlow, Jana Kraft, Joe Roman, Juan Alvez and Melissa Bainbridge<\/p>\n

The stydy was funded by NE SARE (Project ONE14-196<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Have you explored different successful livestock-forage ideas? We would love to hear and maybe test them! You can share your observations by dropping us a line at the UVM Pasture Program:<\/p>\n

Juan Alvez (jalvez@uvm.edu<\/a>); Kimberly Hagen (kimberly.hagen@uvm.edu<\/a>) and, Jennifer Colby (jcolby@uvm.edu<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Juan P. Alvez | Pasture Technical Coordinator UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture A recently-completed research project yielded interesting results regarding dairy cows\u2019 productivity and how much time they spent laying in the field. Cow\u2019s day time behavioral activities can be roughly divided by: feeding (3-5 h per day); resting (12-14 h); social interaction (2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":377,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/pasture-vtpasture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}