Quantifying DMI is necessary for estimation of nutrient consumption by ruminants, but it is inherently difficult on grazed pastures and even more so when supplements are fed. Our objectives were to compare three methods of estimating forage DMI (inference from animal performance, evaluation from fecal output using a pulse-dose marker, and estimation from herbage disappearance methods) and to id...

Drought is a frequent challenge to beef producers, and many operations would benefit from developing a better drought management plan. Producers should be constantly aware of their pasture conditions, stored forage supplies, animal feed demand, and long-term weather forecasts. The recent widespread drought across the Southern U.S. has led to large harvested forage shortages, depressed local cat...

Three 2.4-ha wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) fields were used to test the effects of maturity at harvest (boot vs. dough) and preservation method (hay vs. silage) on forage yield, chemical composition, and animal performance when fed in mixed diets. Forages were incorporated into 4 diets in a 2 x 2 factorial arrangement of treatments with hominy feed, soybean hulls, and cottonseed meal as the prim...

Six ruminally cannulated steers, five Holsteins and one Hereford (250 to 295 kg), were fed 84% forage sorghum silage plus 16% supplement or 50% forage sorghum silage plus concentrate and supplement diets containing either no addition (controls), 1% sodium bicarbonate (NaI-1CO 3 ) or 2% sodium bentonite in a 2 X 3 factorial arrangement of treatments in a 6 • 6 Latin-square experiment with 3-wk p...

Forages are the most important ingredient in a dairy cow’s ration. She is a ruminant and to be a healthy, productive cow she needs a healthy, productive rumen. High quality forages are the key to achieving a healthy rumen and a productive cow. However, because of the importance of forages in maintaining rumen health and cow performance, when deficiencies in the amount or quality of the forage i...

Four multiparous Holstein cows in midlactation were used in a 4 × 4 Latin square to evaluate whether source of forage influenced salivary secretion during eating in lactating dairy cows. The forages were allocated separately from the pelleted concentrates. Cows were offered 1 of 4 forages each period: barley silage, alfalfa silage, long-stemmed alfalfa hay, or chopped barley straw. Saliva secre...

BACKGROUND Grazing mammals rely on their ruminal microbial symbionts to convert plant structural biomass into metabolites they can assimilate. To explore how this complex metabolic system adapts to the host animal's diet, we inferred a microbiome-level metabolic network from shotgun metagenomic data. RESULTS Using comparative genomics, we then linked this microbial network to that of the host...

Bulk tank milk from 28 dairy farms was sampled every second month for 2 yr to assess the effects of grassland management, production system and season on milk fatty acid (FA) composition, concentrations of fat-soluble vitamins, Se, and milk sensory quality. Grassland management varied in terms of time since establishment. Short-term grassland management (SG) was defined as establishment or rese...

Thirty pregnant mares (538 to 695 kg BW; 4 to 19 yr of age) were used to evaluate the effects of plane of nutrition on DMI of hay and mare performance (BW, BCS, and rump fat) during the last third of pregnancy. Mares were divided into 4 blocks by their expected foaling date and randomly assigned within block to either a hay or concentrate plus hay diet (concentrate fed at 0.75% BW, as-fed basis...

Dairy cow performance is affected by both the nutritional composition and physical structure of diet. The total mixed rations (TMR) largely depends on ingredient forage, dry matter (DM) content, mixing time type mixer used. This study investigated feed intake, eating time, milk production, DM digestibility, ruminal pH, budget, sorting antagonistic behaviours in lactating dairy cows fed grass/cl...