Forages comprise 35% to 70% of the dry matter (DM) in diets for lactating dairy cows. Variation in forage quality can impact DM intake, diet energy density, dietary grain and protein supplementation amounts, feed costs, lactation performance, and cow health. Forage quality is highly variable among and within forage types (NRC, 2001). Forage species, variety or hybrid, stage of maturity at harve...

The ‘big three’ forages in California, alfalfa hay, corn silage and small grain silage, are quantitatively the most important feed group on California dairy farms, as they comprise about 45% of all feeds consumed by California dairy animals. Thus, accurate estimation of their energy content is central to feed formulation that allows maximum animal performance and minimum environmental impact. W...

Objective Many livestock owners use the granular form of urea nitrogen during late summer and fall trying to increase forage growth for “stockpiled” forage. Livestock are then allowed to graze the “stockpile” at a later date when other forages no longer are growing or available. This practice extends the grazing season and reduces the need for higher priced stored feed. Urea is a common nitroge...

Small food plots are commonly used for managing wildlife and are often planted with high quality forages like ryegrass, clovers, chicory, or even alfalfa. These plots supplement wildlife nutritional needs during times when forage and browse is short or has poor quality. For example, alfalfa, lab lab, or millet food plots can provide high quality forage during summer months when whitetail does a...

degradation of dry matter (dm) and nitrogen (n) in fresh or frozen-thawed alfalfa and ryegrass was studied by using in situ technique. the forages were labeled with 15n during growth in a glasshouse, harvested at similar growth phase, and fresh (f) or frozen-thawed (ft) samples were incubated in the rumen of 3 sheep. there was no difference (p>0.05) between forage type (s) for the immediately s...

Methane production has been measured from lambs fed contrasting forages. This work has been driven by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and to determine energy losses to methane from contrasting diets. Young ram lambs were fed either fresh ryegrass/white clover pasture, lucerne (also pelleted lucerne), sulla, chicory, red clover, Lotus pedunculatus (lotus) and mixture...

Forage conservation is an important potential solution to seasonal variation in feed quality and quantity herder-farmer conflicts sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Considerable variations exist the type of forages conserved preservation methods across SSA. Hay from cultivated commonly made with mechanical mowers balers by large-scale commercial farms. In contrast, smallholder farmers, who dominate farm...

Studies across 5 yr involving 938 British-breed crossbred cattle (372 heifers, 566 steers) were used to evaluate the effects of grazing alternate summer and fall forages on slaughter breakeven cost of various beef production systems. Grazed summer forage combinations included 1) continuous brome, 2)brome and warm-season grasses, 3) brome and alfalfa or sudangrass, 4) brome and a monoculture of ...

This work compared the effect of ensiling technique and application of urea or a cellulase± hemicellulase enzyme mixture (FSO2) on the conservation of whole crop wheat. Awheat crop harvested at 600 g dry matter (DM) kgÿ1 was conserved with or without the application of urea (40 g kgÿ1 DM) and four levels of FSO2 (0, 1750, 3500 and 15 503 ml tÿ1 DM). Each forage (5 kg DM) was conserved in polyth...

The study was conducted to compare the effects of feeding Acacia auriculata (AA), Gmelina arborea (GA), Albizia lebbeck (AL) and Butryospermum parkii (BP) tree forages as a sole feed for Nigerian goats. Four goats (Yankasa) averaging one year and weighing 11.7±1.8 kg were used to measure the feed intake, digestibility and nitrogen balance. The leaves were offered ad libitum. Dry matter (DM) int...