Netherlands: More dairy cows outside, but shorter in the meadow

The percentage of dairy cows that are grazed is also increasing. 65 percent of the dairy cows went outside in 2016. That had increased to 74 percent in 2020. The CBS figures also show that dairy cows spend less time outside than five years ago. At about half of the farms, the animals are outside for 720 to 1,440 hours a year. The proportion of cows that get more hours of grazing is slowly decreasing. According to CBS researcher Cor Pierik, this has everything to do with the introduction of the milking robot. 'You can see that the combination of grazing and robot milking is more difficult. Farmers then opt for more limited grazing.' Company size plays a role The larger the farms, the less often cows and young stock go outside. On farms with less than fifty livestock units (LU), 93 percent of the dairy cattle is grazed. That is 88 percent in the category between fifty and one hundred LU. On farms between one hundred and two hundred LU, 77 percent of the dairy cattle goes outside. At ...