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Digestibility Experiments with Dairy Cows Consuming Different Quantities of Concentrates

Department of Animal Husbandry, Agricultural College of Sweden, S-750 07 Uppsala 7, Sweden

ABSTRACT

Two digestibility experiments were conducted with both high- and low-yielding dairy cows (a total of 63 cows). All cows were part of a long-term experiment and were fed 7 kg hay, 1 kg dry beet pulp, and a crushed concentrate mixture. The quantity of concentrates in Experiments 1 ranged from 3.0 to 13.5 kg and in Experiment 2 from 0 to 15.7 kg per cow and day. The feces were quantitatively collected for 10 days.

There is good fit to a straight line between consumed and digested organic matter, consumed and digested crude protein, consumed and digested nitrogen- free extract even with as high a consumption of concentrates as 15.7 kg per cow and day. Cows have digested the concentrates to the same extent regardless of the quantity consumed. There seems no reason to assume a lower digestibility at high feed consumption as long as the animals are adapted to a normal feeding ration with long hat and crushed concentrates.