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The effect of wilting grass prior to ensiling on silage intake of beef steers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2021

L.E.R. Dawson ,
R.W.J. Steen  and
C.P. Ferris
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Extract

Wilting of grass prior to ensiling has been widely adopted as a means of improving the fermentation quality of silage. However, the effects on intake have been variable. For example, with growing cattle, Rohr and Thomas (1984) reported that wilting increased silage dry matter (DM) intake by 0.09, while Steen (1984) reported an increase of 0.18. Similarly with lactating cattle, Rohr and Thomas (1984) reported and increase in intake in response to wilting of 0.04, while Patterson, Yan, Gordon and Kilpatrick (1997) observed an increase of 0.20. However, a range of additives were used in these studies and it is suggested that this may have caused variation in the fermentation quality of the unwilted silages which in turn may have affected the response to wilting. Consequently an experiment was designed to determine if the variability in the intake responses to wilting could be explained by differences in the fermentation characteristics of the unwilted silage.

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Programme
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science , Volume 1998 , 1998 , pp. 151
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Science 1998

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References

Patterson, D.C., Yan, T., Gordon, F.J. and Kilpatrick, D.J. 1997. Effect of bacterial inoculation of unwilted and wilted grass silages. 2. Intake, performance and eating behaviour by dairy cattle. Animal Science (in pres.10.1017/S0021859698005590CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohr, K., and Thomas, C. 1984. Intake, digestibility and animal performance. In Efficiency of silage systems: a comparison between unwilted and wilted silages (Eds Zimmer, E., and Wilkins, R.J.) pp. 64–70.Google Scholar
Steen, R.W.J. 1984. 57th Annual Report, Agricultural Research Institute of Northern Ireland, pp. 21–32.Google Scholar