Carolina Cows Cotton to Some Fluffy Extra Fiber in Their Diet

Hay, mooooooove over.

Some North Carolina cattle are finding cotton in their chow. And they’re devouring the fluffy stuff.

“The cows helped me unload it,” farmer Bruce E. Perkinson said. “They’d chase the truck across the pasture to get to it.”

Perkinson was involved in a test to determine whether waste cotton fibers from the textile industry could fill bovine stomachs rather than scarce landfill space.

Ben E. Chase, livestock agent for two counties near Raleigh, N.C., suggested the idea to farmers as an experiment.

“They thought I was crazy,” he said. But he had heard old farmers say cattle grazed in cotton fields after harvest. And cottonseed, cottonseed meal and cottonseed hulls are common in livestock lunches.

The unusual cow cuisine is what Harriet & Henderson Yarns Inc. cleans from raw cotton the company makes into yarn for clothing. The leftovers are mostly cotton fibers too short for processing, crushed stalks, seeds and dust.

Up to 30 tons a week pile up at the company plants. With landfills crowded and expensive to use, company engineers asked the state Cooperative Extension Service in Vance County for help in finding another way to dispose of the material.

They thought it could be used as fertilizer or mulch.

Instead, a few cattle producers and North Carolina State University researchers offered it to beef and dairy herds. The animals dug in, though the odd entree took some getting used to.

“They eat it like they don’t quite know what it is,” said Matthew H. Poore, an animal husbandry specialist. “They chew funny, and slow.”

As some Angus calves at the Bar J Ranch gnawed hollows into a bale recently, wisps clung to their black faces like whiskers.

“Sometimes, it looks like they have beards,” Chase told a group touring the ranch.

The cotton-eating cattle fared as well in health and weight gain as those munching a more traditional menu. Researchers said the feed cotton is nutritionally comparable to low-quality hay, although lower in protein. Some sheep also sampled the new rations, but didn’t develop a taste for it.