Feed costs represent the highest expense to dairy producers. As a consequence, maximizing utilization of nutrients is essential to the profitability and sustainability of dairy farms.
Feed efficiency is usually defined in dairy cows as the ratio of milk output to feed input, namely, milk yield to feed intake. Since feed efficiency is a ratio of two metrics, cows with higher milk production and lower intake are more efficient. In addition to milk production and dry matter intake, other parameters that have been associated with efficiency are genetics, breed, age, lactation number, pregnancy state, body weight (BW), BW change and body size.
Feeding of fiber-degrading enzymes has been proposed as one way to increase efficiency due to higher nutrient bioavailability in feeds. Data obtained from studies on dairy cows, however, is not promising. In these studies, milk output was defined as yield in kilograms, fat corrected milk or energy corrected milk, while feed input was expressed as kilograms of dry matter intake (DMI).
Improved feed conversion
Only two out of 17 experiments reported increments in feed efficiency when fiber-degrading enzymes were fed to dairy cows. Improvements in feed conversion efficiency in both experiments were due to lower DMI without changes in milk production.
Continue reading this article published in Feed Strategy.
