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Silage and milk production: a comparison between concentrates containing different amounts of protected protein as supplements for silage of high digestibility
Author(s) -
CASTLE M. E.,
WATSON J. N.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
grass and forage science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.716
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1365-2494
pISSN - 0142-5242
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2494.1984.tb01669.x
Subject(s) - silage , zoology , meal , milk production , food science , chemistry , biology
Grass silage made in late May from S24 perennial ryegrass was offered ad libitum to eight Ayshire cows in a 16‐week feeding experiment. The silage had a DM concentration of 244 g kg −1 , contained 163 g crude protein (kg DM) −1 with a ruminal degradability of 0.77 and had an in vitro DOMD concentration of 678 g kg −1 . In addition, four concentrates each containing 167 g soya‐bean meal kg −1 were consumed at a mean daily rate of 6.43 kg DM per cow. The soya‐bean meal was either untreated, or ‘protected’ by formalin and mixed in the following proportions, 100:0; 66:34; 34:66; and 0:100 respectively, in the four concentrates. The daily intakes of silage DM were not significantly different on the four treatments and averaged 90 kg DM per cow, giving a mean total daily DM intake of 32.4 g kg −1 live weight. The milk yields were not significantly different on the four treatments and averaged 23.9 kg −1 The treatments had small and non‐significant effects on milk composition and live weight. It is concluded that with a high‐digestibility, well‐preserved grass silage of satisfactory protein content the inclusion of ‘protected’ protein in the supplementary concentrate had no beneficial effects on milk production.