Perspectives on pasture versus indoor feeding of dairy cows

Abstract

The dairy industry in many regions of the world has moved towards a high-input/high-output system maximising annual milk production per cow, primarily through increasing concentrate-based total mixed rations fed indoors year round, as opposed to allowing cows to feed on pasture. Pasture-based dairy systems in regions like New Zealand and Ireland are oriented towards maximum milk yield per unit of pasture, which has led to Holstein strains that are 50 to 100 kg lighter, exhibit a higher body condition score, and produce roughly half the annual amount of milk as compared to their Holstein counterparts kept in confinement in North America and Europe. Freedom from hunger might not be guaranteed when high-yielding dairy cows are kept on pasture without any supplemental feed, but at the same time no access to pasture can be considered an animal welfare concern, because pasturing is generally beneficial to the animals' health. On pasture, lighter-weight dairy cows with a medium milk production potential have proven to be superior with regard to feed efficiency and fertility. The year-round indoor feeding of high-yielding dairy cows with total mixed rations containing substantial amounts of human-edible crops from arable land puts global food security at risk and fails to utilise the evolutionary advantages of ruminants.

Analysis of lactating cows in commercial Austrian dairy farms: diet composition, and influence of genotype, parity and stage of lactation on nutrient intake, body weight and body condition score

“…Overall, concentrate levels, the degree of mechanisation (data not shown) and the lack of pasture as well as pure forage diets confirmed that project farms rank at the current upper end of the structural change of Alpine dairy farming. Larger, non-seasonal, indoor-feeding and more specialised dairy production more and more replaced the traditional, forage-based and smallscaled one in the last 50 years (Knaus 2009(Knaus , 2016.…”

“…Therefore, FV and BS had more similarities to HF compared to their breed averages. This pictured the above-average production level of the project farms and the change in Austrian dairy production towards a more specialised and intensive one (Knaus 2009(Knaus , 2016.…”

“…Compared to other Austrian farms, the project farms had an above-average production level. A more specialised dairy production with larger herds replaced small-scale operations during the last 50 years (Knaus 2009(Knaus , 2016. This trend is continuing (BMLFUW 2016).…”

“…The sharp increase since 1995 has been caused by pronounced genetic gain and by dropping prices of concentrate with Austria's accession to the European Union (Knaus 2009;ZuchtData 2016). This change of circumstances resulted in an increase of larger, more specialised farms feeding more intensive diets (Knaus 2016). However, feed costs make up $50% of the total costs in dairy production (de Haas et al 2014).…”

Physiological and productive response of lactating dairy cows to the alpine transhumance at the end of the summer grazing*

“…Moreover, from an animal welfare perspective, the negative effects of the driving down transhumance might be amplified by the recent evolution of the dairy sector in the mountains. In many alpine regions, autochthonous cattle breeds, well adapted to the alpine environment, have been indeed massively replaced by specialised dairy breeds that have more difficulty to cope with pasture grazing (Battaglini et al 2014;Knaus 2015;Stergiadis et al 2015). According to D'Hour et al (1994), the extreme walking exercise of the transhumance could be particularly detrimental for high producing dairy cattle when managed under extensive systems.…”