Dairy cows typically spend their days eating, sleeping, and ruminating or chewing their cud. Cows in some dairy farms wander around and eat fresh grass (i.e. grazing). In other farms, they are fed grain, hay, or silage (conserved forage) and remain all day in close quarters known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), some of which house thousands of animals.
Many large dairy farms utilize growth hormones and antibiotics during the rearing process to artificially increase a cow's milk production and to decrease the spread of infectious diseases among their cows.