4 ms·
Why do slaughtered cattle require more food? Naively I'd guess that the big adult bison eat at least as much as the young cows in the same timeframe.
by pas 5y ago
Why do slaughtered cattle require more food? Naively I'd guess that the big adult bison eat at least as much as the young cows in the same timeframe.
- Retric 5y agoIt’s the same reason eating to much makes you gain weight. Roughly speaking a 1300 pound adult cow needs ~9,700 calories per day to maintain it’s weight. Where a 770 lb calf only needs 6,230 calories per day to maintain body weight, but growing 2.2 lb per day, requires an additional 4,130 calories per day. So, 6,230 + 4,130 = 10,360. Thus between around 700 lb and full body weight they need more calories than an adult. With feedlot cattle being both close to adult body weight and adding more pounds per day. A newborn 80lb calf doesn’t its self need that many calories directly, but it both grows very rapidly gets its calories from it’s mother which turns grass calories to turn into milk calories at about 3:1 efficiency.