. eight holstein cows in early lactating stage were used in a 4×4 change-over design within 4 periods of 21-d to determine the effects of alfalfa hay particle size and soybean oil supplementation on intake, digestibility, ruminal and blood metabolites, chewing activity, milk yield and compositions. four total mixed rations containing 20, 20 and 60% corn silage, alfalfa hay and concentrate respe...

Intercropping legume with cereal is an extensively applied planting pattern in crop cultivation. However, forage potential and the degradability of harvested mixtures from intercropping system remain unclear. To investigate the feasibility of applying an intercropping system as a forage supply source to ruminants, two consecutive experiments (experiments 1 and 2) involving a field cultivation t...

Value-added traits of alfalfa are needed to provide farmers new high value profitable products. Processing alfalfa to obtain value added products includes three different fractionation methods: 1) wet fractionation; separation into juice fraction and a fiber fraction, 2) dry fractionation; separation into leaves and stems, and 3) fractionation by passage of the whole herbage through the digesti...

Two hundred forty crossbred yearling steers (836 ± 41 lb) were blocked by weight and used in a completely randomized design study intended to determine the effects of three levels of alfalfa hay (7.5, 10, and 12.5%) in steam-flaked corn (SFC) based finishing diets containing 25% wet distiller’s grains (WDG) derived from sorghum. Inclusion of WDG tended to increase DMI (P = 0.17), reduce ADG (P ...

This study was conducted to determine the chemical composition, digestibility, degradability and nutritive value of madder, Rubia tinctorum L.  and alfalfa Medicago sativa. using in vitro and in situ measurements. The mean values for OM, CP, NDF, ADF and EE were 892.5, 172.0, 306.5, 219.4 and 16.0 g/kg DM for madder hay, and 921.3, 141.4, 482.0, 361.1 and 6.50 g/kg DM for alfalfa hay, respectiv...

Three studies were conducted to evaluate the feeding value of slice alfalfa hay in feedlot diets. In Exp. 1, 108 steer calves (183.1 +/- 1.2 kg initial BW; 6 pens/treatment) were used in a completely randomized design to evaluate the effect of baling method on performance and morbidity of newly received calves. The study lasted 28 d. Treatments consisted of a 65% concentrate receiving diet cont...

Nine multiparous (250 +/- 6 d in milk) and 3 primiparous (204 +/- 6 d in milk) Holstein cows were utilized in a 3 x 3 Latin square design to evaluate the lactation performance of cows fed a diet containing dried distillers grains plus solubles (DDGS) with either corn silage or alfalfa hay as forage. Cows were fed total mixed diets containing corn silage (CS), 50% corn silage and 50% alfalfa hay...