Silage & Hay, nutritional
importance and selection for Herd
By Muh Salman Naeem
As
summer season is going to end and winter is just arrived in
upper and central Punjab, and its means to start up the hay
consumption to get through the cold, long months especially
in northern region e.g.
Attock, Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Quetta, Upper Dir, Lower
Dir, Mansehra and Charsadda Districts for dairy animals.
Whether you bale your own fodder or purchase it from a
commercial grower, knowing the nutritional value of your
forage supply to provide maximum energy to animals in
freezing weather.
Under severe frost, green fodder production goes to
stress.
Than main cheap option of nutrition with concentrate feed is
silage in commercial and small dairies. Silage faced some
issues in this regard.
1. Season prices are going high as winter arrived, if dairy
have planned to purchase the silage.
2. Silage hub is around the central Punjab, so logistics
charges to northern Punjab lower down your profits in case
of not self-reliant in growing maize.
3. Quality issues in commercial purchase are the biggest
constrain to the dairies. Aflatoxin, induced fungus and low
quality chopping reduce down the quality. For this, quality
test is mostly recommended but due to hectic and
availability in only some big cities, this procedure is not
recommended for small holding animal’s owner.
4. A small bale of silage is the good approach for small
dairies. But costing and availability of these bales are on
average not viable.
5. As temperature fall down to 0 0C than crystal formation
in silage reduce the feeding to animals.
6. Rice straw and Wheat straw are the main part of feed with
concentrates to overcome the fodder issues. Whether rice and
wheat straw can be use as filler or to complete dry matter
in animal feeds.
In this hour, Untraditionally
Hay is the best, cheap, highly nutritional source for the
dairies. With numbers of queries in local people’s minds
about feeding, animal response and effect on milking yield,
hay is the best cheap source of nutrition to local, crossed
and exotic animals.
However, hay is highly
variable from year-to-year and field-to-field in perennial
fodder like Rhodes grass and Alfalfa. It’s not easy to
presume on the nutritional value as hay available in bales
or in open form in field.
Weather growing and harvest
conditions, time of harvest, variety and age at harvest are
all factors that can make a massive diversity in the dietary
worth of the hay crop.
After harvesting, drying
time, temperature, hay color and mechanical equipments may
affect the hay quality.
However it is better to feed
hay rather than the wheat straw and rice straw. So, to get a
better idea of what you’re feeding to your herd, a forage
sample is suggested by dairy owner or check forage sample by
commercial grower can provide the needed information.
Rhodes grass and alfalfa are the best crops for hay. Rhodes
grass as shown from name belongs to grass family and alfalfa
belongs to legumes family.
From 10 animal dairy herds to
5000 animal herd, Alfalfa and Rhodes grass can compensate
the green & dry fodder requirement with good crude protein
and rumen filler but silage available as carbohydrate
source.
However there is no
comparison between silage and hay. Maximum results can be
gain by using both of them in optimum conditions. 6 factors
are important to evaluate the nutrition in fodders:
1. Relative Forage
Quality (RFQ)
“RFQ is like an index, much like EPD (Expected Progeny
Difference) for cattle. Same quality fodder gives different
results in different genetic animals like in local, crossed
or in exotic (Jersey, Holstein Friesian). RFQ is mainly
practical for marketing or purchasing hay, as it serves as a
simple guide of quality, but it isn’t considered the most
useful to guide supplement purchasing decisions.
2. Dry Matter Intake (DMI)
DMI is actually an estimate of how much an animal will
consume, based on the digestibility of the fiber in the hay.
As fodder is move to maturity stage after attaining size,
dry matter is going high but palatability reducing with
passing of every day. Weather conditions also put big
effects on fodder quality. Summer season fodders have
relatively high in dry matter rather than winter season
fodders.
3. As-Sampled vs.
Dry-Matter
“To compare quality, you always want to know the dry matter
(DM). “The moisture content of forages is never constant as
it will change with passage of time. As literature shows
silage moisture range is among 40% to 60%. So, it’s a great
difference in TMR formulation on moisture basis. If you were
actually mixing a feed, you have to use the as-fed
information. Since hay is normally fed free-choice, it is
most useful to work with the DM information to select the
correct supplement, and be able to compare forage samples
with varying moisture content.”
4. Crude Protein
Crude Protein (CP) is based on the nitrogen content of the
feed. So nitrogen fertilizer greatly enhances the protein
levels of hay. Legumes produce their own nitrogen fertilizer
through rhizobium on their roots, and generally have even
higher protein levels than grasses. In case of local fodders
alfalfa and clover belongs from legume family have 18% CP
where as Rhodes grass have 12%-17% CP.
In grasses comparison, Rhodes
grass has more CP rather than Mott grass and Rye grass.
Protein is one of the nutrients for livestock growth and
performance, but it is simply a matter of providing what the
animal needs. Proteins levels in hay below 7% can
drastically reduce intake.
Harvesting time of fodder is
also very important in measuring the crude protein. In
alfalfa, young aerial leaves have more than 24% crude
protein. And stem has 18% protein. With passage of time, as
fiber content increases, crude protein decrease down. Than a
stage also come when alfalfa leaves have only 13% CP, but
stems have not more than 3%.
5. Fiber
“Fiber is a key dimension of digestibility, the extra mature
or older the forage, the higher the fiber content. Neutral
Detergent Fiber (NDF) is the total fiber component of forage
used to daily consumption. As the NDF percentage increases,
intake declines. Acid Detergent Fiber (ADF) is the level of
indigestible fiber that can’t be used by the animal.
6. Energy
“Energy is the nutrient that keeps an animal’s systems
working, and is vital for all of the body functions. Energy
utilization based on
• Net Energy Maintenance
• Net energy growth
• Net Energy Lactation
Animal use the nutrition’s
for maintenance firstly than for growth and productivity.
Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) is the value most often
used to evaluate the energy available for ruminant animals
for selecting supplements, the greater the value, the more
energy-dense the feed.
TDN levels below 50% can
reduce animal intake. The other energy measures are more
commonly used for more precise feedlot and dairy ration
formulations.
December 2014
Courtesy:
Pakissan
