Wheat silage for fattening young male cattle

Abstract

Wheat silage (WS) produced as a double crop on land commonly laid fallow in the winter for cotton was incorporated in fattening diets for cattle and compared with maize sillage (MS) and vetch hay (VH) in a digestion trial and a series of feeding trials. In the digestion trial, WS, MS and VH were given as the sole feed. Dry matter intake (g/kg W 0.75) was 63.5, 64.8 and 65.2 daily, and the ME content (MJ/kg DM) was 9.47, 10.15 and 8.32 for WS, MS and VH, respectively. In feeding Trials 1 and 2, animals were fed on a diet composed of wheat silage and concentrate mixtures. The wheat silage, which was given separately, constituted 0, 300, 450 and 600 g/kg diet, on a dry matter basis. The daily carcass gain for the above treatments was 582, 584, 552 and 516 g, respectively, in Trial 1, and 810, 687, 690 and 653 g, respectively, in Trial 2. The degree of fatness of the animal was inversely related to the proportion of silage in the diet. In Trial 3, WS was compared to VH and in Trial 4 to MS. The roughages were mixed with the other ingredients of the diet, and incorporated at a rate of 450 g/kg DM diet. In neither trial were there significant differences in daily live and carcass weight gain between the different roughage treatments. Animals on the VH diet ate more dry matter and were fatter.