Effect of Replacing Alfalfa Hay with Alfalfa Silage in High Performance Dairy Cattle Diets

Document Type : Ruminant Nutrition

Authors

1 Faculty of Agriculture, Zanjan University, Zanjan, Iran

2 Department of Animal Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Zanjan University, Zanjan, Iran

3 Iran Animal Science Research Institute-Karaj

Abstract

Four-handed fifty lactating Holstein cows with mean body weight of, 597± 40 and 50±20 and days in milk body Condi from sure of 3.1±0.4 were blocked by parity and randomly assigned to 3 treatments. Each treatment had 3 pens and each pen had 50 cows. The experiment lasted for 60 days (10 days adaptation and 50 days collection period). Concentrate to forage ratio was 60 to 40 and alfalfa hay replaced with alfalfa silage. Dry mater intake, milk yield and composition did not changed significantly due to complete replacement of alfalfa hay with alfalfa silage. Milk urea nitrogen increased significantly (15.85 vs 14.69 mg/dl) when alfalfa silage was replaced with alfalfa hay. Rumen pH were similar in all treatments and higher than 6.0 of alfalfa silage diet. The result of this experiment indicated that in TMR based ration alfalfa hay can replaced completely with the alfalfa silage.

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History

  • Receive Date: 09 April 2014
  • Accept Date: 09 April 2014
  • First Publish Date: 09 April 2014

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