Do Cows Drink Milk?

The most important drink a newborn calf needs is the colostrum, enriched milk from its mother. A calf requires colostrum to receive nutrients, minerals, and antibodies. These antibodies protect the calf from diseases, while the nutrients and minerals help the calf build up its strength. Colostrum is packed with protein, lactose , fats, and calcium.

A calf requires four quarts of colostrum at birth and the same amount twelve hours later for optimum development. A calf has 24 hours after birth to receive the liquid colostrum, as the calf’s gut will become impermeable to large molecules after this time. This impermeability is called gut closure.

Calves survive on the milk from their mother until they can eat solid food, like grass, cow pellets, or foliage. At about the age of 8 weeks, the owner will begin to wean the calf from its mother’s milk.

To produce milk for its young, it is necessary for a female cow to eat a healthy diet. A cow is an herbivore, meaning it eats plants. It consumes grasses, alfalfa, clover, and hay from the pasture, or chopped corn called silage that the farmer provides.

The plants the cow eats are digested by traveling through the four compartments of its specialized stomach. A ruminant animal’s four stomach compartments allow it to digest grass or vegetation without having to chew it completely first. Microbes in the compartments help break down the tough plants the cow eats.

The nutrients from the food travel through the blood stream to the cow’s udder. Cells in the udder use water and the nutrients to produce milk. If a cow is making milk for only one calf, she will produce about one gallon of milk per day.