Meal patterns of cows offered complete diets with different ratios of concentrate to silage

Abstract

It is frequently assumed that energy intakes from mixed foods with a high proportion of silage (HS) are lower than those from mixed foods with a high proportion of concentrate (HC), because of short-term constraints, i.e. gut fill, that physically limit the amount of food a cow can consume. It was the aim of the present study to analyse how different proportions of concentrate in mixed foods affect short-term feeding behaviour. We hypothesised that cows offered HS are likely to have more meals that are more spread out during the day and vary less in size than cows offered HC. Alternatively, we expected higher correlations between meal size and the length of intervals before (pre-prandial) or after (post-prandial) meals for cows offered HS than for cows offered HC. We tested the hypotheses with a data set of 21195 meals.