Cereal crops are used throughout the world for livestock feed. When they are managed properly they provide excellent grazing and high-quality silage or hay. It is important to remember that grazing should occur during the vegetative stage and silage or hay harvest should occur during flowering to early seed fill. Corn is one of the few annual crops that will provide quality forage after seed ma...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of fat supplementation for enhancing milk conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in early lactation without affecting ruminal fermentation. 24 Holstein dairy cows were assigned to a completely randomized design employing a 2 × 4 factorial arrangement. Factors were particle size (15 and 25 mm) and two different sources of alfalfa supplemented with and wit...

This study was designed to separate the effect of fermentation quality on voluntary intake of grass silage from other feed factors affecting intake. Variations in DMI were quantified, and the impact on intake was modeled. The relationships between individual silage components and intake were examined. A partially balanced changeover experiment with 30 Norwegian Red steers (137 +/- 16.4 kg of BW...

Copyright resides with the authors in terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 South African Licence. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/za Condition of use: The user may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, but must recognise the authors and the South African Journal of Animal Science. _________________________________________________________________________________...

A sample of 6 intensive beef farms was selected according to the feeding plan adopted during the fattening period of Charolais bulls. Two farms did not include any corn silage in the diet (CS0), while corn silage represented 22% of the dietary DM in the second group of 2 farms (CS22), and it raised up to 44% of the dietary DM in the last 2 farms (CS44). Five bulls were randomly selected from ea...

OBJECTIVE Wheat is an alternative to corn silage for ruminant feeding in northern China. This study examined the effects of harvest time and added molasses on nutritional content, ensiling characteristics and in vitro degradation of whole crop wheat (WCW). METHODS Fresh WCW at the milk-ripe stage was harvested at 0700 h (i.e., in the morning [Mo]) and 1700 h (i.e., in the afternoon [Af]), and...

The nutrient contents of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) are reasonably similar. Despite similarities, the lactation performance of dairy cows fed perennial ryegrass has not been compared with the lactation performance of dairy cows fed alfalfa. The present study was implemented to compare the performance of lactating cows fed alfalfa or perennial ryegras...

Two in vitro experiments were performed to identify promising exogenous fibrolytic enzyme products (EFE) and optimum dose rates (DR) for improving the degradation of alfalfa hay and corn silage. The relationship between enzymatic activity and fermentation responses was examined to identify optimum formulations. In experiment 1, 5 EFE containing mainly endoglucanase and xylanase activities, with...