Page 18 - RealDirtENG2020

More than one stomach compartment
Unlike humans, some animals digest their food in more than one step. First, they eat the raw material, and then they regurgitate a partially- digested version of that feed, which is called cud, and chew it again. This process is called ruminating—and animals that digest their food this way are called ruminants.
Ruminants include cows, goats, sheep, llamas, bison, buffalo, elk, and deer; they each have four compartments in their stomachs (rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum) to help them digest their food.
Dairy cows
Dairy cows—those raised to produce milk—are leaner than their beef cattle cousins, as they put their energy into making milk instead of gaining weight by building fat and muscle. Holsteins are the most popular milking cows in Canada, and are easily recognizable by their black and white spotted hides.
Other common dairy breeds in Canada are Jersey, Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Milking Shorthorn, and Canadienne.
Did you know that more and more Canadian farmers are using robots to milk their cows? Cows move around freely inside the barn, and it’s up to them to choose when and how often they go to a robot, where they are milked by an automatic machine. The robot keeps track of how many times a day each cow has been milked, how much milk she has produced, and can track how much feed she has eaten. That means that the robot can let farmers know if a cow might be sick, if she isn’t giving as much milk, or isn’t coming to the robot to be milked as often.
There are two other common barn styles used to house Canadian dairy cows:
Free-stall barns barns are open-concept where cows move around freely, and go to a central milking area, called a parlour, two or three times a day at a set time to be milked by farmers. To keep cows comfortable, many farmers have large fans and backscratching stations, and robots that travel the alleys pushing feed closer for the cows to eat.
Tie-stall barns barns have an individual stall for each cow, with bedding, and cows are milked in their stalls. The farmer brings feed to the cows in their stalls.
In all barns, milk ows through pipes into a large milk tank, called a bulk tank, where it is cooled and stored until the milk truck comes—every two days on most Canadian farms—to pick it up and take it to a dairy processing plant.
Some dairy farmers will let their cows out onto pastures in spring, summer and fall. When it rains or is too hot, though, cows generally prefer the comfort of a cool, well- ventilated barn.
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The Real Dirt on Farming
Dairy Farmers of Ontario
DID YOU KNOW?
The average dairy cow produces 10,909 litres of milk every year55!