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Feeding Wafered Hay Seven Times Per Day Compared to Complete Ad Libitum Feeding

Departments of Animal Husbandry and Agricultural Engineering University of California, Davis

ABSTRACT

The wafering process for hay packaging has been developed rapidly and has found wide acceptance among hay producers and dairymen (2). Along with this development there has been a growing interest in mechanical devices for feeding these products. An understanding of the feeding behavior of cows is important for the proper design and development of such devices. Heretofore, wafer-feeding trials have been conducted with hand-feeding of individual or small groups of cows without concern for any possible effects which might be due to different means of offering the feed (3, 4).

Studies with other feeds have indicated that frequent offerings of feed could induce animals to eat more (1). Preliminary unpublished results at this Station indicated no advantage in offering pelleted hay eight times/day as compared to two times/day or completely ad lib. Problems with the mechanical feeder used limited full interpretation of those results.

Accordingly, a trial was conducted to determine if controlled, frequent offerings of waters had any effect upon feed consumption and performance of lactating cows.