The amount of fodder necessary to satisfy the nutritional needs of a cow depends on various factors, first of all the weight of the animal and its physiological situation (for example if it is a cow that breastfeeds, if it lives in the wild, etc.). The quality of the same forage is also very important, understood both as the type of herbs and grains that compose it, and as its residual humidity (% of dry substance).
Suffice it to say that as the digestibility of the food decreases, the amount eaten by the animal also decreases, because it needs more time to digest it.
For example, if we take a cow of 550 kg it needs about 12.5kg of dried hay (dry matter 88%) every day. If, on the other hand, the feeding is based on maize (waxy) silage, a nursing cow can consume 2.5 to 2.7% of its own weight (therefore from 13.75 to 14.85kg for the cow in the previous case ).
