Novel Nutrition for Dairy Replacement Heifers

The goals of a dairy replacement management program are to rear heifers at a low economic and environmental cost without compromising future lactation performance. To meet these objectives, increased sophistication dairy heifer nutrition programs may be required. Research evaluating more sophisticated dairy heifer nutrition programs however does not always result in a relevant field application. For example, numerous research trials have evaluated protein degradability in dairy heifer diets. Neither negative nor positive effects on improving milk yield, growth or decreasing feed cost have been observed. In contrast, dairy heifers have commonly been fed diets containing low cost, high fiber forages (MPS, 2003), which meet the low energy requirement (NRC, 2001) of replacement heifers. Feeding bred heifers low energy, high fiber forages minimizes over-conditioning at calving which can be detrimental to lactation performance (Hoffman et al., 1996) but feed efficiency and feed cost of this feeding practice is seldom considered. Recent research, while limited has demonstrated that heifers can be limit-fed to control over-conditioning resulting in reduced feed cost without effect on lactation performance. Thus, limit feeding is potential management practice that meets the goals for field application as defined above. This paper will review limit feeding and other new and potential innovations in dairy heifer nutrition.