Morning and evening pasture access – comparing the effect of production pasture and exercise pasture on milk production and cow behaviour in an automatic milking system

Nighttime pasture access: Comparing the effect of production pasture and exercise paddock on milk production and cow behavior in an automatic milking system

“…The period around dawn is often a major grazing period (Gibb et al, 1998;Rook, 2000;Taweel et al, 2004;John et al, 2017) and it is remarkable that cows in our experiment refrained from grazing at dawn, despite the presence of sufficient pasture to graze ( Table 2). The potential for increased pasture intake with nighttime grazing that was suggested by Charlton et al (2013) and indicated in our previous experiment (Kismul et al, 2018) was thus not realized.…”

“…The current experiment was performed in an AM barn where cow behavior, motivation, and choice has a strong influence. The current experiment can be compared with our previous experiment with 2 separate session (morning and evening) of pasture access arranged with similar design and similar relative ME difference between pasture and silage (Kismul et al, 2018). In that experiment, MY did not differ between cows on exercise paddock and production pasture, respectively, but grazing time on production pasture was considerably longer in that experiment, 3.8 h/d, versus 2.5 h/d in the current experiment.…”

“…The ME requirements for both experimental groups were based on experimental MY, BW changes, and estimated walking distances for the 2 treatments and thereafter calculated according to requirements for maintenance, MY, and BW changes taken from national feed tables (Spörndly, 2003) and requirements for activity (NRC, 2001), as described in detail by Kismul et al (2018).…”

“…The ME intake for both treatment groups and the energy balance for EX were calculated from recorded indoor feed intakes and corresponding nutrient contents, whereas 2 pasture intake estimates were made for PROD (one assuming intake covering nutritional needs and one assuming equal energy balance between the groups), as described by Kismul et al (2018).…”

“…This provides flexibility, combines the advantages of pasture and indoor feeding, and may even increase grazing efficiency (Kennedy et al, 2009). Daytime pasture access has been studied intensively and has been shown to be a successful strategy for cows in automatic milking systems (AMS; Kismul et al, 2018). However, Charlton et al (2013) observed higher motivation of cows to go out to pasture at night than in daytime, suggesting that nighttime grazing is an even more beneficial grazing strategy.…”