Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2009
1. In a large-scale experiment, using about 500 cows, half the cows were fed a production ration consisting of decorticated ground-nut cake, maize meal, wheat offals and molasses supplying about 0.6 lb. protein equivalent per 10 lb. milk produced, and the remaining half were fed a production ration containing the same constituent foods in different proportions supplying a similar starch equivalent, but only two-thirds the amount of protein. No measurable difference was observed in the fatness, handling properties of the skin, hair on the body and percentage of fat and solids-not-fat in the milk.
The milk yields showed no difference during the winter feeding period of about 20 weeks, but during the succeeding period when all the cows were allowed ample grass the milk yield response of the cows previously given the low-protein ration was significantly greater than that of the corresponding cows previously given the high-protein ration.
The experiment was repeated the following winter, using about 600 cows, and confirmatory results were obtained.
2. Another experiment similarly planned, using 300 cows, compared highwith low-protein production rations consisting of the constituents noted above together with soya-bean meal and rice bran. No significant differences were observed between the effect of the two rations on milk yield or composition, fatness of the cows, etc. There was, however, an indication (not statistically significant) that the low-protein ration which contained a relatively high proportion of rice bran depressed the milkfat percentage.
3. A small but more completely controlled experiment confirmed the findings of the large-scale experiments.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.