Improve fibre digestion this winter

This year’s silages are promising, with good dry matter, energy and protein levels, but lower NDF levels are being reported.

Farmers can use this to their advantage. Lower NDF levels present an opportunity to maximise dry matter intakes as a lower level of structural fibre and increased intake potential will allow rumen throughput to be increased. This results in a rise in the cow’s potential to eat more home-produced forage.

This has been seen already this autumn, with clamps of first cut silage fed out through the summer dwindling fast.

To maximise this effect, microbial efficiency needs to be optimised.

Research has proven that by replacing some starch with sucrose in the ration, it will help increase NDF digestibility and allows better utilisation of RDP in the grass silage.

This leads to a more efficient rumen environment, which will undoubtedly encourage rumen throughput and provide an efficient source of fermentable energy for rumen microbes so they’re working to their optimum to fully utilise the nutritional components of the ration.

When the cows were fed a source of sucrose, the diets were found to have an NDFD percentage of 66.1 per cent, which was 5.2 per cent more than cows fed starch diets.

Further studies have suggested that an increase in NDFD is proven to increase milk yield. Incorporating a sugar level of five to seven percent of the DMI in the form of a molasses-based liquid feed, from QLF’s ‘simply sugar’ range, into rations will not only improve NDFD, but will also increase the palatability of the ration and reduce sorting.

With milk prices rising, there’s a real opportunity for farmers to increase margins, especially if they’re able to fully utilise the availability of home-grown forage.

Bronwen Pihlwret is nutritional advisor at Quality Liquid Feeds.