Abstract

Introduction Large volumes of human-edible products as cereal grains and soya beans are fed to dairy cows in intensive production systems (Eisler et al., 2014). Given the predicted increase in demand for livestock products and competition of land for food and feed, human inedible feeds are becoming increasingly important. Ruminants have a unique ability to produce high quality food, as milk and meat, from fibrous feed and other products not suitable for human consumption. Substituting human edibles with by-products as feed for ruminants substantially increase the net food production (human edible output minus human edible input) (Ertl et al., 2016). The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on feed intake and milk production when human-edible feeds as cereal grain and soy beans was completely substituted with different blends of by-products as sugar beet pulp, rape seed meal and distillers grains in a high quality forage diet.

Keywords

by-products; cattle; dairy cows; feed; human inedible feeds

Published in

Rapport / Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Institutionen för husdjurens utfodring och vård
2016, number: 293, pages: 82-86
Publisher: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet

Conference

Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Feed Science Conference

Authors' information