Do cows need to graze grass ? All opinions are divided on this

WET again and we can't do anything on the clay at Plaistow, which is very frustrating indeed.

It is also warm one day and very cold the next; spring is reluctant to show its face this year.

It has been a very long winter and all the noise about climate change has mentally prepared us for something rather earlier and better than this.

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However, we have large stocks of silage and the cows seem to be in no hurry to think of going out to graze just yet, in fact having spent most of last year indoors due to the bio-digester being built, they have become accustomed to the 'hotel' and are rather lazy.

This is an interesting question which has now grabbed the headlines due to the proposal by Nocton Dairies to build an 8000 cow dairy herd in Lincolnshire. The animal 'welfare' organisations are up in arms, some existing dairy farmers are not happy, and it has provided many pages and hours of debate and discussion.

*Leaving the economic merits of such a project to one side, and again there are divided opinions on this, it is a very interesting subject; do cows need to graze grass?

This is at the heart of the welfare debate, and it would seem a fairly straightforward question; of course cows should be outside in the sunshine grazing grass. But what if there is no sunshine? What if it's driving rain?

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I know from my own cows last year when we gave them a field to just go out in and exercise and maybe graze a little, if it was too hot, too cold, wet or dry, we were very surprised at the amount of time they spent in the shed eating and laying in their cubicles.

Of course it would be nice to give cow's choice, but this is not practical, and also leads to problems, such as contamination of the field, especially in the wet, with mastitis and other problems.

Grazing looks a peaceful and rather splendid occupation to us, but actually the cows will tell you that it is hard work, and in the wet they struggle to get enough dry matter into their rumen when the grass is soaking, and we know from research that they will lie down to ruminate whether they are full or not.

Last year our cows found it much easier to quickly top up from the trough of goodies than go out to graze for hours. Unfortunately for them, they will be going out this year not least because it's too expensive! But will that be an improvement on their welfare?

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Truth is we do not know. There is no research around that tells us what the mental needs of the dairy cow are.

We don't know whether cows actually need to go out to graze or not, and I think it is high time we found out. Without such crucial information how do we decide if Nocton dairies, who will provide the highest welfare standards in the country (they say and I have no reason not to believe them), and will certainly meet all the physiological needs of their cows, are lacking?

If this was an 800 cow dairy then we would not have heard about it, but cows going out to graze in an 800 cow herd have to walk great distances in order to reach the furthest paddocks due to the scale of the operation and the number of acres needed.

Assuming that the cow tracks are in excellent condition, in hot weather or driving rain the cows would most likely rather not be walking and would have stayed inside if given the choice; this is not straightforward.

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However, it is irritating when emotional rubbish such as '˜battery cows' or '˜American feed-lot system' are printed in the media, flames that are fanned by rather ignorant people. If we are really concerned about dairy cow welfare; let's find out what the cows think, and what they want. We might well be surprised!

*My cows are rather pleased with the latest scientific report, which sought to clear their name vis--vis climate change. Published in 2006, the UN report '˜Livestock's long shadow' claimed that farm livestock were responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, which was more than transport.

This figure was arrived at by adding up all GHG emissions associated with livestock production from farm to table, including fertilizer production, land clearance (!), all vehicle movements and livestock methane by burping.

This allowed rather silly celebrities such as Paul McCartney to wage a campaign against eating meat, and rather more seriously, leading figures in the climate change establishment, in particular IPPC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change) Chairman Ranjendra Pachauri, and Lord Stern to jump on the bandwagon. A new analysis has now stated that the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) report was actually comparing apples with pears.

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In a nutshell, it turns out that the FAO report had taken very different ways of calculating transport emissions, and one of the original authors Pierre Gerber has agreed that the new report has a valid point, and the FAO is now working on a revised report.

I am infuriated by such sloppy work and bad science, especially when the headlines have been written, denigrating livestock farming for the last four years, when even if one accepted that natural animal emissions were in any way the same as transport, which is completely barmy; to find that they had simply not bothered to work out transport emissions accurately is unforgivable, and has blown the original report out of the water.

It seems that more and more of the Climate Change frontrunners are being systematically discredited; little wonder that a growing percentage of the population have real doubts about this whole matter.

n At Crouchlands we are producing low emission milk due to our bio-digester turning our methane into electricity, and we are going flat out with output hovering around 96per cent of targeted maximum output.

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We have found an added advantage in the last week or so, by spreading the liquid part of the digestate on to the land at 40 Celsius, it seems to be having a beneficial effect on the grass over and above the fertilizer value.

The field is steaming away for some hours after application! Beware - hot grass!

Farm

Diary

by Gwyn Jones

Do cows need to graze grass ? All opinions are divided on this

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