Partial replacement of soybean meal with soybean silage in lactating dairy cows diet: part 1, milk production, digestibility, and N balance

The high reliance of the European livestock sector on imported soybean meal (SBM), especially from South America, poses environmental problems, like greenhouse gas emissions for transportation and land-use change with loss carbon stock biodiversity. Aim present study was to evaluate partial substitution SBM whole-plant silage in diet dairy cows. Thirty-six lactating Holstein cows were arranged according a change-over design, 2 weeks adaptation 5 days sampling per period. A control (CON) based maize SBM, representing 10.7% total dry matter (DM). In (SBS) 35% (on DM basis) replaced by silage. dietary treatment did not affect intake, milk production, efficiency while fed SBS resulted lower crude protein (3.43 vs. 3.55%, p < .001) higher urea (30.5 28.7 mg/dL, = .002), comparison CON. Nutrients digestibility than CON; particularly fibre 31.5 38.8% (p .001). nitrogen utilisation CON (32.7 31.3%, .003). Soybean penalise feed intake production. However, fully exploit this forage, digestibility, should be improved.HighlightsSoybean can substitute one-third cow dietSoybean inclusion yield DMISoybean reduced N use