It has been proved that modern technological approaches to milk production issues cannot function optimally if they do not take into account the cows behavior which is a manifestation of their biological needs. The cattle health, productivity, reproductive capacity and productive longevity depend on the level these needs are met. This is especially true of the livestock brought into modern farms from abroad.

Among the key factors influencing cows body is feeding, adequate ration and balance of which determines  manifestation of genetically inherited productivity in the animals. It is therefore important to investigate how the suggested feeding and farming conditions meet the requirements of animals to manifest their genetically pre-defined level performance. All this is clearly seen in the evaluation of cows feeding behavior.

The purpose and objectives of the study is to investigate and to compare the length of feed intake in highly productive cows of Holstein breed of foreign and domestic origin under the same type year-round feeding and loose boxed farming conditions as well as to find out whether cows feed behavior  depends on daily milk yield and lactation age.

Research material and methods. Cows of Holstein breed of foreign (Hungarian, Danish, German) and domestic (Ivano-Frankivsk region and JV "Agrosvit") origin farmed in  loose boxed conditions  and fed with  a year-round full-feed mixtures and milked with "Parallel " machine with " Duovak 300 "milking equipment were the study material.

Cows analogs of different origin variants were distributed into four groups: I – with a daily milk yield of 20 kg, II – 20,1-25, III – 25,1-30 and IV – more than 30 kg. For all that, the mass fraction of fat in the milk was not taken into account, since they didn’t differ significantly in all the groups. The cows feeding  behavior  was studied depending the daily yield and lactation age according to the techniques by E.I. Admin.

Biometric processing of the research results was carried out with the methods of variation statistics according to N.A. Plohynskyi, using «Microsoft Office Excel 2003" and "Statistica-6" standard package of applied statistical programs.

Thus Feed intake duration in Holstein breed cows of both foreign and domestic origin under the same type year-round feeding and Loose boxed contents conditions is related primarily to the amount of the daily milk yield: cows with milk yield of less than 20 kg consumed the feed for 199.3- 203.3 min during the day, those with the yields – for 27.9-29.4 – 270.8-277.4 min, and those with yields of more than 30 kg – for 324.8-344.5 min.

Analysis of the behavior of high-performance foreign and domestic  origin Holstein breed cows proved that under technological conditions of "Agrosvit" JV there are no significant differences in terms of feed intake between the animals. This allows us to assert  their high adaptability which is  evidenced by the level of their milk productivity.

Key words: holstein cows of foreign and domestic origin, feeding behavior, a year-round feeding the same type, adaptation, loose-boxed content.