Effects of faba bean, blue lupin and rapeseed meal supplementation on amino acid metabolism of dairy cows fed grass silage-based diets.

Abstract

Information about the amino acid (AA) supply of locally produced protein supplements to dairy cow metabolism is needed to design sustainable diets for milk production. In this dairy cow experiment, grass silage and cereal-based diets supplemented with isonitrogenous amounts of rapeseed meal (RSM), faba beans (FB) and blue lupin seeds (BL) were compared with a control diet (CON) without protein supplementation. The diets were arranged as a 4×4 Latin Square using periods of 21days, and four rumen-cannulated Nordic Red dairy cows were used in the experiment. The intake of all AAs increased in response to protein supplementation and was for many individual AAs higher when RSM rather than the grain legumes FB and BL were fed. The total AA flow at the omasal canal was 3026, 3371, 3373 and 3045g/day for cows fed CON, RSM, FB and BL, respectively, but only RSM resulted in higher milk protein output. This may be explained by the higher provision of essential AA for milk protein synthesis when RSM was fed. The cows fed FB showed some positive features such as a tendency for greater omasal flow of branched-chain AA compared with BL. Overall, low plasma methionine and/or glucose concentrations in all treatments suggest that their supply was possibly limiting further production responses under the dietary conditions of the current study. It seems that the benefits of grain legume supplementation are limited when high-quality grass silage and cereal-based diets are used as the basal diet, but higher responses in amino acid supply and subsequent production responses can be expected when RSM is used.