The dairy cow is a ruminant, which means that she has a four compartment stomach. This type of stomach is designed to digest forage ( hay, green grass, silage).lf you watch a cow eat, she will basically consume as much forage as she can hold. She then will lay down and start to chew her cud. A cud is a ball of this forage material which has gone to one of the stomach compartments where it has been softened with stomach fluid and then rolled up into a ball about the size of your fist and brought back up into the mouth where it is ground up into small pieces and swallowed. these small pieces go into the main stomach compartment called the rumen where small microscopic organisms will attack the small pieces of forage and digest the nutrients from the forage. This digested material and the organisms will pass to the next compartment where some of the liquid is removed and the solid material passes to the fourth compartment, or the true stomach, where the organisms are digested by the stomach and the waste material passes on down the intestines. This very quickly is how the cow eats and digests such large amounts of food.

What else is special about the dairy cow?

She is a milk producer. The dairy cow has been bred and selected over many years to produce large amounts of milk and to stay in the herd for a long time. As a rule a dairy cow will not get fat during her lactation. Why?... Because it takes such a large amount of nutrition to produce milk, that the cow can not eat enough to make milk and get fat, in fact a cow at peak lactation will have to use some of her body reserves to make the milk she is capable of producing.

What else do we know about the dairy cow that is interesting?

The dairy cow will have her first calf and start to produce milk when she is about 2 years old. From then on she should have another calf every twelve months and during that time she should produce milk for ten months and have a dry period for 2 months.

How much milk can she produce in that 10 month period? This will very greatly from cow to cow and herd to herd depending on her care and nutrition and her genetic capability.

The average cow in Newfoundland is producing about 9000 Kg's per 10 months. There are cows in the world that are producing 20,000 Kg's in 10 months. These are exceptional cows and the highest producing cow has produced 34,000 Kg's.