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Oat Pasture for Lactating Cows¹

Department of Animal Industry and Veterinary Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

ABSTRACT

Several reports (1, 2, 4, 7, 13) have indicated that green oat forage stimulates milk production. Copeland (1) found that cows produced 4 to 5.5 lb more milk daily when grazing oats compared to periods when oats were not grazed. McClymont (8) reported a drop in milk fat test from 4.3 to 2.6% within a week following the start of grazing oat pasture. The animals were changed to another type of roughage and the milk fat test rapidly returned to normal. Several workers (2, 3, 8, 10) have studied the effects of various supplements on the composition of milk produced by cows grazing oat pasture. Generally, little or no benefit was realized from supplementing the rations of cows grazing oats with high-fiber or bulky ingredients (2, 3, 10, 13).

On the dry matter basis immature oat forage was reported to contain 12 to 33% crude protein (2, 7, 9, 10), 20 to 33% crude fiber, and 32 to 40% nitrogen-free extract (3, 9, 10).

¹ Published with the approval of the Director of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Fayetteville.

² Present address: Department of Dairy Husbandry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.