Cattle require large amount of daily water and the quantification of daily intake of water is a fundamental step in the evaluation of water metabolism. Important environmental factors regulating water consumption include DM intake, nature of the diet, milk production, temperature and humidity.
Over the time, several efforts were spent on the prediction of water intake and, among the equations that have been proposed to predict water consumption, although there are much more recent studies, the NDS Water Sub-model adopts the equation from Murphy at al., 1983 for the lactating cow and the equation from Holter and Urban, 1992 for dry cow, for the following reasons:
- they are recommended by the NRC 2001;
- they are well accepted and appear to make accurate predictions;
- prediction for lactating cow (Murphy at al., 1983) is not only related to the DMI and milk production but also to Na content of the diet and current minimum temperature.
Through the Recipes section of the platform you can check the current drinking water intake predicted and how it is affected by the diet and environmental effects.