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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2024.1433769
This article is part of the Research Topic Quantifying and Mitigating Pollution from Livestock Production Systems View all 3 articles

Assessing the dry matter intake and enteric methane emissions of pre-partum dairy cows offered grass clover or grass only silage from two different silage systems

Provisionally accepted
Michael Kennedy Michael Kennedy 1,2,3Ben Lahart Ben Lahart 1Jonathan Herron Jonathan Herron 1Tommy Boland Tommy Boland 2Christina Fleming Christina Fleming 1Michael Egan Michael Egan 1*
  • 1 Moorepark Animal and Grassland Research Centre, Teagasc, Fermoy, Ireland
  • 2 School of Agriculture and Food Science, College of Health and Agricultural Sciences, University College Dublin, Belfield, County Dublin, Ireland
  • 3 VistaMilk SFI Research Centre, Fermoy, Ireland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Over the winter period low grass growth and availability in pasture based dairy systems results in animals being housed and predominantly fed a diet of grass silage. There is limited availability of methane (CH4) data evaluating the impact of forage type in dairy cows over the pre-partum period. The objective of the current experiment was to evaluate feeding grass clover (GC) silage and grass only (GO) silage on dry matter intake (DMI) and enteric CH¬4 emissions in dairy cows pre-partum. A complete randomised block design was conducted for the six-week experiment over two winter periods; December 2020 to January 2021 and December 2021 to January 2022. In each year, 30 non-lactating pregnant dairy cows were randomly allocated to two treatments (n=15). In both years, cows in the GC treatment were offered grass clover bale silage, while cows in the GO treatment were offered grass only pit silage. Individual animal DMI and gaseous emissions were monitored daily using Hokofarm RIC feed stations and Greenfeed technology. Grass clover silage consistently had greater (P<0.05) organic matter (OM) digestibility and lower (P<0.05) NDF and ADF content when compared to the GO silage. Cows in the GC treatment had significantly greater (P<0.05) total DMI (TDMI) compared to the GO treatment cows. Daily CH4 emissions (g/d) were not affected by treatment; however, cows in the GC treatment had reduced (P<0.05) CH4 yield (g/kg TDMI). Offering dairy cows grass clover silage over the pre-partum period resulted in greater DMI with reduced CH¬¬4 yield, when compared to cows offered grass only silage.

    Keywords: Dry period, feed intake, Gaseous emissions, Non-lactating, sustainability

    Received: 16 May 2024; Accepted: 06 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kennedy, Lahart, Herron, Boland, Fleming and Egan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Michael Egan, Moorepark Animal and Grassland Research Centre, Teagasc, Fermoy, Ireland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.