To satisfy increasing food and nutrient supply requirements for our growing future human population, farmers and staple food producers carry vital responsibilities. Especially farmers with ruminant livestock like dairy cows transform otherwise for human consumption unsuitable fibre into highly nutritious milk and meat. Nevertheless, dairy farmers are challenged increasingly by the consequences of global warming. Economic risks like feed supply and volatile commodity prices need to be balanced, also taking into account the increasing environmental awareness of end-customers. Focusing just on emissions, dairy production is contributing an essential part of the total carbon footprint emitted by the agricultural sector. Since rumen degradability of feed was identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as one of the most influential parameters in reducing the carbon footprint of dairy farming, the desire to exploit leverage potential for efficiency increases can be considered exceptionally high. Although the positive effects of improved feed, in other words, neutral detergent fibre rumen degradability for dairy farming are well understood, detailed information on the correct management to obtain well digestible feed sources is still missing. Using the smart dairy nutrition ration formulation concept, applying readily on-farm available digitized data and management information the objectives of this study were: 1) to assess the influential parameters which govern neutral detergent fibre rumen degradability of corn silage, using a set of 584 corn silages from multiple years, and 2) to evaluate within an integrated dairy production set up the economic and ecological improvement potential by feeding a subset of 28 different corn silages, including detailed variety information. Results show that the neutral detergent fibre rumen degradability is primarily governed by variety choice and can be four times more important than the correct harvest stage decision. By feeding corn silage varieties with high neutral detergent fibre rumen degradability, monetary income could be increased by ~10% while simultaneously reducing manure accumulation.
Cell wall digestibility is an important quality trait of modern silage maize cultivars. The symbiotic relationship between microbes and ruminant livestock enables the efficient upcycling of otherwise for human consumption unsuitable rumen digestible fibre or cell wall components into highly nutritious milk and meat. Before entering the Czech National List of Plant Varieties, new silage maize germplasm is extensively tested for different cell wall digestibility parameters. Recently published, the undigestible neutral detergent fibre (uNDF) cell wall digestibility approach promises even greater practical relevance. The aim of our study was, therefore, to assess the potential of the uNDF method, compared with current standard procedures, using a vast set of official Czech plant variety trial evaluations and Czech silage analyses from the 2018 cropping season. The uNDF method yielded a twice as high phenotypic standard deviation, compared with the current standard approaches. This is good news for plant breeders, official variety testing organisations, and farm professionals alike, enabeling faster variety improvement and simpler variety selection. On the other hand, due to the low differentiation potential, we discourage the use of the absolute lignin content when selecting for digestible silage maize varieties. Since between the digestibility traits enzymatic soluble organic substance (ELOS) and cellulase digestibility (DCS), a Pearson correlation close to one was observed, the substitution of one of these analytics by the uNDF method, may render valuable additional information in a highly economical manner.
Modern high-performance swine genetics, such as Danish hybrid sows, can yield large litter sizes. Especially in the suckling phase, managing these large litters with low piglet losses is often a challenge. To support the modern highly prolific sows and litters, the use of pre-starters as suckling pig supplementary feed, including sufficient freshwater access, are nowadays good professional practices. Neonatal piglets especially profit from liquid supplemental feed via the possible higher absolute dry matter intake potential, in comparison to solid feed or without supplement. Various studies also indicate that supplying additional liquid feed to piglets pre- and post-weaning may yield epigenetic, life-long positive effects in animal key performance indicators. Although the advantages of early liquid piglet nutrition are today widely known, supplying adequate nutrient concentrations, the smooth preparation of the piglet's digestive system towards solid, starchy feed, and consequently enzymatic training to reduce post-weaning stress are still challenges which have to be considered. Due to their higher concentration of solids, piglet starters in porridge form i.a. offer the advantage of higher nutrient densities and aggregation stability. The aim of this study was, therefore, to answer the questions: 1) Can improved litter performance also routinely be obtained by supplying a porridge supplemental diet to neonatal piglets, and 2) Does improved litter performance translate into overall improved net economic returns within a professional piglet production setup of 254 piglets from 21 litters? Results show, applying the preweaning porridge strategy not only yielded around 10% higher daily gains and life weight results than conventional approaches, but also a return of investment of 2 : 1.
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