Feed intake is the single most critical factor of dairy production, and performance of dairy cattle can be enhanced or hindered by environmental factors that affect it. These environmental factors can by divided into physical and climatic conditions. On modern dairies, the physical factors may be of more concern. Modern facilities provide the cow with protection from the natural elements. Howev...

background: excessive use of antibiotic growth promoters leaded in the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and by consuming animal products, humans are at risk of receiving their residual. therefore, instead of using antibiotics as growth promoters, some alternatives must be identified and introduced to animal breeders. objectives: the purpose of this research was to study the effect of a...

1Carrington Research Extension Center, NDSU 2Hettinger Research Extension Center, NDSU The objective of this project was to evaluate corn processed by fi ne grinding or rolling or fed whole in relation to dietary forage level for fi nishing yearling steers. Results indicate when forage levels are greater than 15.5 percent on a dry-matter basis, dry rolling or fi nely grinding corn to maintain a...

Context Feed is the largest expense on a dairy farm, therefore improving feed efficiency important. Recording dry-matter intake (DMI) prerequisite for calculating efficiency. Genetic variation of and varies across lactation stages parities. DMI an expensive difficult-to-measure trait. This raises question which time periods during would be most appropriate to measure DMI. Aims The aim was evalu...

Two experiments using six rumen-fistulated Holstein steers in 3 X 3 Latin square designs were conducted to test the effects of urea addition to corn silage, and grain addition to haylage, on feed intake, digestibility of nutrients and rumen fermentation of complete diets fed once daily. Addition of .34 and .68% urea to corn silage increased dietary crude protein from 8.1 to 11.3 and 13.3%, and ...

The objective of this study was to identify genomic regions and metabolic pathways associated with dry matter intake, average daily gain, feed efficiency and residual feed intake in an experimental Nellore cattle population. The high-density SNP chip (Illumina High-Density Bovine BeadChip, 777k) was used to genotype the animals. The SNP markers effects and their variances were estimated using t...

To evaluate the effects of feeding four different levels of starter in male Holstein dairy calves, a completely randomized study was conducted, using 28 calves with initial body weight of 40.5±2.4 kg. The animals were fed iso-nitrogenous starter and were weaned when they consumed 350, 500, 650 and 800 g/d of starter for 3 d consecutively. Starter and water were available ad-libitum throughout t...

this study was conducted to investigate effect of different sources of copper on gas production parameters and nutrients digestibility in zandi male lambs. in the first experiment, 18 male lambs (initial body weight 17.53±1.62) divided into three groups and fed one of the three experimental diets for 70 days. dietary treatments were control (basal diet without copper supplement), basal diet plu...

Sixty Holstein cows were assigned to two treatments at 21 d before calving and were group-fed a prepartum diet with or without yeast culture. After parturition, cows were individually fed one of five treatments for 140 d: 1) 21% forage neutral detergent fiber (NDF) without yeast culture, 2) 21% forage NDF with yeast culture, 3) 17% forage NDF without yeast culture, 4) 17% forage NDF with yeast ...

Twenty-four lactating Holstein cows were used in an 8-wk completely randomized design trial to examine the effects of feeding whole cottonseed (WCS) with elevated concentrations of free fatty acids (FFA) in the oil on intake and performance. Treatments included WCS with normal concentrations of FFA (6.8%, control) and 2 sources of WCS with elevated FFA [HFFA1 (24.1%) or HFFA2 (22.3%)]. The 2 so...