Laverstoke Park

Education Centre

Organic Cows

Bovine Welfare

All of our cows and buffalos live outside in grassy fields and pastures enjoying the 31 different herbs clovers and grasses in our mixed leys. Any calves that are born in the late autumn are brought into covered sheds with their mothers for two to three months during the coldest and wettest winter months where they are fed silage (similar to pickled grasses) homemade from our mixed leys. They also get a mixture of home-grown cereals such as oats, wheat and barley. We bring the milking buffalo into covered areas from late November to early March which means they are receiving a silage and cereal mixture which is a more nourishing feed during the winter months and also helps keep them a little less muddy during the wet winter months as milking a buffalo caked in mud is not an easy task!

All of our cows and buffalo give birth naturally outside in the fields. The beef calves will stay with their mothers until they are naturally weaned; the dairy cows and buffalo stay with their calves for approximately seven days so that the calves get the benefit of their mothers colostrum and then the calves go into a special calving pen where they are bottle fed jersey milk and the mothers go into the dairy stock to be milked twice a day for the next ten months. When the dairy cows are in calf again they will be given a two month break from milking prior to giving birth in order to rest and put on weight for a healthy calf. Cows are pregnant for nine months whereas buffalo are pregnant for ten months.

Bovine Comparison Chart

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