Daily feed intake reflects the number of meals consumed daily, the length of each meal, and the rate of eating. By altering the number of daily meals and the average meal size
(length × rate of eating), the dairy cow can adjust daily DMI (Grant and Albright, 2000). High-producing dairy cows allowed continuous access to TMR consumed 9 to 14 meals daily, whereas lower-producing cows consumed only 7 to 9 meals per day (Heinrichs and Conrad, 1987). The eating patterns of high-producing cows differ substantially from those of lower producing cows. During the first 5 wk of lactation, dairy cows with the highest eating and ruminating rates had the greatest DMI (Coulon et al., 1987). The importance of eating and ruminating time to the energy budget of the cow becomes clear when it is recognized that between 10 and 30% of the metabolizable energy provided by the feed is used to support these two activities (Susenbeth et al., 1998).