Feeding & Management

Weather Influence upon the Rumination Rates



At the top part of the graph we can see the rumination performance of a two nearby dairy farms in Israel, the season is fall and the weather is totally unstable.
From left to right we can see the positive rumination response to the minimum day temperature as it dramatically dropped from 15 to around 8-Celsius degrees.
In general, chewing activity of both farms shows a common movement towards the day minimum temperature, an exception can be seen on the 7th of December 2003 when the rumination rate of farm B suddenly dropped down, this event was eventually combined with a milk reduction and the cause was probably a feeding failure that the dairy farm staff was not aware to.

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