When it comes to your cow’s nutritional needs protein, energy, and minerals are usually first on the list. However ruminants also need roughage in their diets as well. A minimum level of roughage is necessary in order to keep their rumen working like it should.
What are roughages?
Roughage is generally defined as any feedstuff that has “long roughages”. Or any particles that are from 3/8 to 1 ½ inches or longer in length. Now you may be saying “well I feed a supplement with fiber in it so they already get their needed roughage”. Not necessarily, when ground up for supplements it loses some of it’s impact on the rumen. For cows the recommended NDF, or Neutral Detergent Fiber, is 25%. The higher the crude fiber value in your chosen supplement the more roughage there is in the diet. As an example, if feeding in a pen situation with no hay available cattle should have a feed that contains at least 16% crude fiber.
What do roughages do?
Roughages provide what is called the “roughage effect” in that the long coarse fiber materials rubs against the wall of the rumen. This causes the muscles in the wall of the rumen to expand and contract. This expansion and contraction stirs and mixes the food that is in the rumen. By mixing the material it allows the microorganisms there to break more of the food down. This allows more of the nutrients to be absorbed and used by the animal.
Another benefit of roughages is when the cow regurgitates the long fibers to “chew the cud”. When this happens saliva is mixed with it which acts as a buffer when it returns to the rumen. The benefit this buffer provides is that it helps keep the acidity from getting to high.
Now you may be wondering “how do I determine what supplement to use to provide more roughages for my cows?”. One good place to start is by sitting down with your livestock nutritionist to determine what would work best for you. Another option is to look at the crude fiber percentage on the feed tag, the higher the crude fiber percentage the higher the roughage in the diet.
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