Production pasture versus exercise and recreation pasture for cows in automatic milking systems

In an automatic milking unit, a daytime grazing system with production pasture (group P) was compared with offering cows a small grass-covered paddock only for exercise and recreation, i.e. exercise pasture (group E). Two experiments (Exp1 and Exp2) were performed during 12 and 5 weeks with 53 cows and 42 cows, respectively. Group P was offered new pasture daily with night-time access to grass silage ad libitum (Exp1) or in restricted amounts (Exp2). Group E was offered exercise pasture and silage ad libitum during 24 (Exp1) or 16 hours (Exp2) daily. In Exp1, group P had significantly (P<0.05) higher daily milk yield (+1.6 kg Energy Corrected Milk) than group E and daily silage intake in groups P and E was 9.8 and 12.2 kg dry matter (DM) per cow, respectively. In Exp2, cows in group P had similar milk yield to cows in group E and daily silage intake was 6.2 and 11.5 kg DM in group P and E, respectively. These results show that it is possible to achieve either higher milk yield (Exp1) or considerably lower intake of supplementary silage (Exp2) on production pasture compared with exercise pasture.