Harvesting cereals in whole-crop form and conserving them by ensilage, has potential benefits compared to conventional cereal harvesting systems in terms of a lesser dependence on weather conditions and higher animal production per hectare. Three experiments were carried out to determine the performance of cattle offered whole-crop barley silage harvested at an immature stage of development.

Whole-crop barley was harvested using a precision chop harvester in each experiment and intakes were recorded on a group basis in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 1, winter barley was harvested either on June 17 (Cut 1 - grain at milky stage) or July 6 (Cut 2 -grain at mealy stage). Groups of seven Friesian steers (503 kg mean starting weight) were offered either Cut 1 or Cut 2 silage ad libitum for 95 days supplemented with one of the following supplements per head daily : (a) none, (b) 3 kg rolled barley, (c) 3 kg barley/soya (154 g crude protein (CP)/kg DM) and (d) 1 kg soyabean (470 g CP/kg DM).