Forage Intake and Nitrogen Retention in Wethers Fed Ryegrass Haylage Supplemented with Maize Silage

Many decision support tools have been developed to predict herbage intake with herbivore ruminants indoors (Faverdin 1992) or at grazing, both using short-term (Baumont et al. 2004) or daily scale input variables (Heard et al. 2004; Delagarde et al. 2011). However, the ingestive and digestive interactions when diets with more than one type of forage are used have not been sufficiently studied. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of maize silage supplementation to wethers receiving ryegrass haylage on OM intake, OM digestibility, microbial protein synthesis and N retention

Herbage Intake, Methane Emissions and Animal Performance of Steers Grazing Dwarf Elephant Grass with or without Access to \u3cem\u3eArachis pintoi\u3c/em\u3e Pastures

The inclusion of legumes in diets based on grass has nutritional benefits due to ingestive and digestive interactions (Niderkorn and Baumont 2009). Moreover, it is speculated that tropical legumes can contribute to reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) compared to diets exclusively composed of grasses (Archimède et al. 2011). However, under grazing conditions, these advantages are not always possible to obtain. This occurs when the spatial distribution of sward grasses impose limitations on access to legumes by grazing animals (Solomon et al. 2011). This can be the case, for example, when legumes are overlapped by the leaves of a tufted tall grass, as dwarf elephant grass (Crestani et al. 2013). Considering that management strategies for increasing legumes in the diet of grazing animals should be better studied and data on enteric methane emitted by ruminants eating tropical forages are scarce, the aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of access to an exclusive area of peanuts (Arachis pintoi cv. Amarillo) for cattle grazing dwarf elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum cv. BRS Kurumi) on herbage intake, animal performance and enteric methane emission