What is it about?
The objective of this study was to assess live weight gain, animal behaviour and nitrogen excretion in the urine of dairy heifers fed herbs during autumn and spring. The heifer weight gain in spring was higher when chicory pasture was offered, while the work showed inconsistent results of use of chicory and plantain as a mitigation tool to reduce the nitrogen environmental impact of heifer rearing systems in autumn and spring.
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Why is it important?
Use of herbal pasture to improve cattle performance and reduce environmental pollution is a hot topic concerning sustainable animal production
Perspectives
The area of use herbal pasture to reduce environmental pollution needs more research, as the underpin mechanisms drive the inconsistent results need to be further explored.
long cheng
University of Melbourne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Live weight gain, animal behaviour and urinary nitrogen excretion of dairy heifers grazing ryegrass–white clover pasture, chicory or plantain, New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, December 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00288233.2017.1411372.
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plantain has a potential to reduce pollution in grazing animal production system
the journal of Agricultural Science
Live weight gain, urinary nitrogen excretion and urination behaviour of dairy heifers grazing pasture, chicory and plantain L. CHENG (a1), J. MCCORMICK (a1), A. N. HUSSEIN (a1), C. LOGAN (a1) ... https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021859616001076Published online: 19 January 2017 Summary The objective of the present study was to investigate live weight (LW) gain, urinary nitrogen (UN) excretion and urination behaviour of dairy heifers grazing pasture, chicory and plantain in autumn and spring. The study comprised a 35-day autumn trial (with a 7-day acclimation period) and a 28-days spring trial (with a 7-day acclimation period). For each trial, 56 Friesian × Jersey heifers were blocked into five dietary treatments balanced for their LW and breeding worth (i.e. genetic merit of a cow for production and reproduction): 1·00 perennial ryegrass–white clover pasture (PA); 1·00 chicory (CH); 1·00 plantain (PL); 0·50 pasture + 0·50 chicory (PA + CH); and 0·50 pasture + 0·50 plantain (PA + PL). A fresh allocation of the herbage was offered every 3 days with allowance calculated according to feed requirement for maintenance plus gain of 1·0 kg LW/day. In both trials, LW gain was lower on CH than other treatments. In the spring trial, UN concentration and UN excretion were lower in CH and PL than other treatments. In autumn, a higher urination frequency was observed over the first 6 h after forage allocation in CH and PA + CH than other treatments. Data from the present study indicate that feeding CH alone limited heifer LW gain. However, heifers grazing swards containing chicory (CH and PA + CH) and plantain (PL and PA + PL) had the potential to lower nitrous oxide emissions and nitrate leaching from soil compared with heifers grazing PA, by reducing N loading in urine patches.
animal feed science and tech
Urinary nitrogen concentration (UNcc) and urinary N excretion (UN) are directly associated with the nitrogen (N) leaching potential of soil and greenhouse gas emissions from grazing ruminants’ urine patches. This study was carried out to examine the effects of feeding cut plantain (PL) and perennial ryegrass-white clover pasture (PW) on dairy heifer feed and water intake, apparent nutrient digestibility and N excretion in urine. Twelve Jersey-Friesian heifers aged 9–10 months with an average body weight of 200 ± 18.8 kg (mean ± standard deviation (SD)) and breeding worth of NZ$162 ± 16.9 (mean ± SD) were randomly allocated to one of two treatments (six heifers per treatment): PW and PL. No difference was observed in dry matter intake (P = 0.117) and N intake (P = 0.370) between PW- and PL-fed heifers. The dry matter digestibility and digestible organic matter in the dry matter were similar between PL- and PW-fed heifers (P > 0.05). Heifers consuming PL had lower UNcc and UN than those consuming PW (P < 0.01). Estimated urine volume and total water intake were higher for PL-fed heifers than those fed PW (P < 0.01). Further, in comparison with PW-fed heifers, PL-fed heifers had lower plasma urea N (P < 0.001) and tended to have lower plasma δ15N – feed δ15N (P = 0.086). The findings suggest that feeding PL to dairy heifers may reduce UNcc and UN in comparison with those on conventional pastures; therefore it provides an opportunity to mitigate on-farm N pollution.
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