The very idea of feeding cows on grass orinate's with some of these feed companies and the idea of some owners that if my neighbor does it so should I. Sort of like keeping up with the Jones's. The main thing that a cow is is a roughage harvester She or he is in existence to convert a product[grass,straw,silage,potato waste etc.] into something we as humans can use . It surely does defeat the purpose of the bovines in our life if we have to supplement them .All of this said,we live in the extreme northern part of the U.S. and we do have to feed hay or something more than a lot of the country.When it snows under and very extreme cold extra feed is necessary. A nasty expensive thing but thats the way it is. We do make them earn their liveing as long as possible. One other thing is we are raiseing a different type of cattle than was here 50 years ago. A lot of the continental cattle came to us as barn raised and were never forced to work for their liveing and so they did and do need extra care. Nuf said ,I guess!
