Abstract
The aim was to study if locally produced organic legume seeds as protein supplement could improve the performance of dairy cows. The experiment was a cyclic change over design were the control diet consisted of grass silage and barley (60:40) on a dry matter (DM) basis. Barley was replaced with rapeseed expeller (RSE), or isonitrogenous supplements of peas, untreated field beans (UFB), heat-treated FB (TFB) or a lower level of TFB (TFB-low) that provided the same dietary metabolizable protein concentrations as of UFB. None of the legume protein supplementations had effect on DM intake (DMI) neither on energy corrected milk yield compared to control. The RSE treatment increased milk (24.8 vs. 23.6 kg d-1) and protein yield (913 vs. 863 g d-1) compared to other protein supplements. Heat-treated FB had no effect on DMI, milk or protein yield compared to UFB. Only RSE resulted in improvements in dairy cows performance in relation to the control diet.
Highlights
The number of organic dairy cows in Sweden increased with around 12500 cows from 2009 to 2011 and within the last 5 years the total number has been rather stable at around 37798 cows (Tuominen et al 2016)
Barley was replaced with rapeseed expeller (RSE; 104 g kg-1 diet DM), or isonitrogenous supplements of rolled peas (232 g kg-1 diet DM), untreated rolled FB (UFB; 140 g kg-1 diet DM), heat-treated rolled FB (TFB; 140 g kg-1 diet DM) or heat-treated rolled FB, providing the same dietary metabolizable protein (MP) concentrations as UFB (TFB-low; 80 g kg-1 diet DM)
Schingoethe et al (1988) reported a depression of milk fat for dairy cows fed heated soybeans whereas Faldet and Satter (1991) and our study showed that milk fat percentage was similar among treatments
Summary
The number of organic dairy cows in Sweden increased with around 12500 cows from 2009 to 2011 and within the last 5 years the total number has been rather stable at around 37798 cows (Tuominen et al 2016). In Sweden, organic milk delivery has been increasing from around 250000 t in 2010 to 367000 t in 2015 (Tuominen et al 2016). High prices and consumers concerns has brought the attention to the use of more economical and ecological ways of producing home-grown protein feeds for animal feed market (Puhakka et al 2016). Rapeseed meal has been shown to be a good protein source for conventional grass silage based diets (Huhtanen 1998).
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