Feeding Systems with Legumes to Intensify Dairy Farms - cgiar

Concentrate. This concentrate was based on maize and soybean and
prepared at the ECAG feed plant. Its nutritional content was 14% CP and
2.3 Mcal ME.
Semolina. Commercial rice semolina, with 12% CP and 2.8 Mcal ME,
was used.
Animal Management
Six multiparous Jersey cows, at 50 days postpartum, were assigned at
random to three treatments in a Latin square design repeated
simultaneously. Treatments and amounts of products (between parenthesis
as % LW) were as follows: T1, sugarcane (1%) + semolina (0.5%) +
concentrate (1.48%) + urea (0.02%); T2, sugarcane (1.3%) + concentrate
(0.5%) + fresh C. argentea (1.2%); and T3, sugarcane (0.1%) + concentrate
(0.5%) + silage of C. argentea (2.4%).
Measurements
Because of the limited amount of silage, each period covered 12 days, 7
of which corresponded to animal adaptation and to of sampling. Samplings
were made on days 1, 3, and 5.
Intake and quality of DM on offer and rejected. DM intake was
calculated as the difference between the amount of material on offer and
that rejected on days 1, 3, and 5 during each 5-day evaluation period.
Composite samples for that week were sent to the ECAG laboratory to
determine crude protein (CP) and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD).
Milk production and quality. During the five days of each evaluation
period, individual milk production (kg/cow) at both milkings was weighed.
To measure milk quality, two milkings proportional to production were
sampled. Each sample was cooled for conservation and then analyzed for
fat, protein, lactose, total solids (TS), and non-fat solids (NFS).
Results
No major difference was observed among the three rations offered
regarding total DM intake. In the case of fresh C. argentea, intake was 10.7
kg/cow per day (3.0% animal LW) and that of silage was 10.4 kg/cow per
day (2.9% animal LW), indicating that Cratylia does not present problems of
consumption when offered fresh or as silage together with sugarcane
(Table 1).
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