by James Rogers, North Dakota State University

Over the holiday season, your stomach may churn due to a diet of rich holiday food. Stomach churning is not enjoyable and calls for a bottle of antacid. Stomach churning is a good thing, however, for cows. 

For a cow, stomach churning indicates a healthy rumen system, which is the movement of the rumen and reticulum to mix all the ingested food with rumen fluid and microbes. Additional indicators of a healthy rumen are a balance of fiber- and starch-digesting bacteria and a neutral pH.

Moving from pasture and range to a drylot is a major diet change. If done incorrectly, it can damage the rumen in a way a bottle of antacids can’t fix. Cow herds across the Northern Plains spend the grazing season out on pasture and range consuming forages with rumen fiber-digesting microbes. Once the grazing season is over, many cow herds spend the winter months in a drylot. Moving from pasture and range to a drylot is a major diet change. If done incorrectly, it can damage the rumen in a way a bottle of antacids can’t fix.

A management goal for the cow herd during the drylot period should be to maintain a healthy rumen environment. Once grass returns in the spring and the cow herd is returned to grazing, the rumen is churning and a readjustment period back to grazing is not required.

This diet shift can mean changing from forages containing 80% moisture to dry hay with 15% moisture. Depending on the nutrient content of the hay, a supplement may compensate for any nutrient deficiencies. There is no way of knowing forage nutrient content without forage testing. This means the cow herd must adjust to the type of forage being consumed and the supplement type, grain (which has high starch content) or coproduct (which has high digestible fiber content).