As someone born and raised in the Midwest, whenever I visit ranches in the South, it continues to amaze me how cattle adapt to the environment they live in.

Twenty years ago, a colleague and I began an extension publication with this sentence: “Without question, stocking rate is the most important grazing management decision a rancher makes.”

Multiyear drought in much of the western U.S. has made it evident that we will have to make some tough grazing management decisions this year, and likely in the coming years as well.

The most unique characteristic of a dairy cow is the rumen, the large fermentation vat that utilizes microbes to convert the feed she consumes into the nutrients she needs. She is able to take feedstuffs that other animals, including humans, cannot use and extract nutritive value from them to produce milk.

Milk protein and fat content will vary across dairy cow breeds. While Holstein dairy cows typically have the lowest milkfat percentage due to their high milk yield, they often still produce the greatest amount of butterfat per day.