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Cows or Cattle are one of the three types of animals available in Farming Simulator 17. They are the most expensive. Cows generally produce Milk, but they can also be made to produce two different kinds of fertilizers (Manure and Slurry). Cows produce these substances at a higher rate as long as they are provided sufficient care.

Purchasing Cows[]

Cows may be purchased at the animal store, using the animal dialog box. Each cow costs $5,000. You may pay for the cows to be delivered to your farm for $200 per cow, or you can pick them up with an animal transporter. The Joskin Betimax RDS 7500 will hold 6 cows, while the more expensive Michieletto AM19 will hold 14.

The game will not render all of your cows, so do not expect to see the full number of cows in the cow area.

Each Cow has an upkeep cost of $40 per day.

Function[]

The function of cows is to turn water, straw, grass, and power food into milk, manure, and slurry. Alternatively, you could feed cows hay or silage instead of power food (a mixture of hay and silage with optional straw filler) at the cost of reduced productivity. Like any animal in the game, water is required, and providing less than the full complement of required resources will reduce productivity.

Total Mixed Ration, or TMR, is mixed in a mixer wagon and when given to the cows, it is split between power food and hay/silage, so there is no need to feed the cows separate hay or silage when feeding them TMR.

Straw is used for bedding for the cows and is directly related to the production of manure.

Basic Production Figures[]

At 100% productivity with all inputs available, a cow will produce milk that will sell on Hard for $285.60 per cow. Less the maintenance cost, that is $245.60 per cow in profit on Hard. This is a based on a test of 30 cows for 1 day at as close to 100% productivity as I could keep them at 120x speed cleaning the feeding area as needed.

A cow will use up 35 liters of water, 70 liters of straw bedding, 90 liters of grass, 175 liters of hay/silage, and 105 liters of power food (which is 280 of Total Mixed Ration) per day, based on a test of 30 cows from 1:12 to 1:11 of the next day. These are round numbers and hopefully someone will come in with the true numbers.

For comparison, if you added up the grass, hay/silage, and power food usage for a cow you get 370 liters. At a silage sell price of $300, if you turned the same amount of grass into silage and sold it you would get $111, while the cow makes $245 just with milk sales. The main problem with cows is that throughput is low while the biogas plant will take a much higher amount of silage with no upfront cost.

Or to put it another way, 10 cows, produce at 100% efficiency (@75% in brackets), per day, $4000 ($3200) of milk, 2300l (1800l) of manure and 2500l (1900l) of slurry. Bear in mind it takes 30 cows to produce enough manure/slurry to fertilise a 1ha field (per day). Reproduction will happen every 120h (160h), and the daily upkeep cost is $40.

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