Milk urea nitrogen: a nutritional management tool

Milk Urea Nitrogen - A Nutritional Evaluation Tool?

protein nutritional status of dairy cows. Milk urea nitrogen reflects the amount of urea found in milk and these values are closely correlated with the concentration of urea found in the blood. MUN values should not be used by themselves when evaluation a herd’s feeding program but can be used in conjunction with evaluating milk production records, feeding management practices, and dry matter, ...

Milk Urea Nitrogen Testing

Use of Milk Urea Nitrogen in Herd Management

Milk urea nitrogen (MUN) has been proposed as a management tool for nutritionists and dairy farmers to use as a monitor for protein feeding rates and nitrogen metabolism in lactating dairy cows. Dietary crude protein (CP) content has the greatest nutritional influence on MUN concentrations and has the potential to be used as a management tool for assessing dietary protein feeding. The MUN conce...

A statistical evaluation of animal and nutritional factors influencing concentrations of milk urea nitrogen.

Data from 35 trials with 482 lactating cows fed 106 diets were used to study the effects of animal and dietary factors on the relationship between milk and blood urea N and the value of milk urea N in the assessment of protein status. In two trials, urea N in whole blood and in blood plasma were closely related (r2 = 0.952); the slope was not significantly different from 1.0, and the intercept ...

Application of Milk Urea Nitrogen Values

In dairy cows, dietary crude protein (CP) that can is not captured as milk protein is largely excreted as N in manure. Of course, some protein-N is retained for growth in first and second lactation animals and in the calf and fetal tissues during pregnancy; however, these amounts are small relative to the proportion of absorbed N going into milk. Cows and other mammals convert N from absorbed a...