How many acres of alfalfa to feed one dairy cow a year?

Answer 1

This is one question that is impossible to answer because of many reasons such as:

• A cow cannot live on one type of forage for an entire year
• A dairy cow will need to be treated or given a preventative for bloat from a diet of nothing but alfalfa, if that is what the purpose of the question is.
• Location was never specified
• Precipitation for the particular area was never identified
• A question of whether that cow is being grazed on alfalfa or if it's being fed all year round needs to be answered
• What is the weight of this cow? What breed?
• If the cow is being fed, how many times during a growing year is that to-be-specified acreage of alfalfa should be cut? Once? Twice? Thrice?
• If the cow is not being fed a diet of strictly alfalfa as was posed in the second bullet, then what else is this cow being fed?

As such, depending on your location and, as mentioned before, how many cuts of alfalfa are taken off if the cow is being fed and not grazed, acreage can range from 2 acres to 20 acres. If grazed, it would be significantly more than that.