No abstract

The ensilage of total mixed ration (TMR) is a technology designed to help farmers with limitations to provide a balanced diet for their herds. Our aim was to evaluate the conservation of TMR ensiled in round bales with or without holes in the wrapping plastic film. Eight round bales of a corn silage-based TMR of 1,000 kg (370 kg DM/m3) were prepared. Ten days (d) after ensiling, four bales were randomly punctured with two holes of 25 cm2 each in opposite sides of the bale. The temperature in the center of the bales was recorded during the storage using dataloggers. After 60 d of storage, bales were weighted to assess dry matter (DM) recovery. Silages were sampled for measuring DM content, chemical composition, pH, lactic acid, and microbial counts. The temperature of the sliced bale face was assessed by infrared thermography. The holes in the plastic affected the DM content, DM recovery, and pH, whereas lactic acid, microbial counts, and temperature were not affected by treatments. The holes in the sealing plastic film should be avoided. However, holes of 25 cm2 each were not capable of causing expressive losses in TMR silage stored in 1,000 kg bales.

No abstract

The bioacoustic method is an important tool for the identification of the ingestive behavior of ruminants, especially in extensive production systems. This is mainly due to its potential to solve the deficiencies presented by the usual method, which is based on the visual observation of the animals. In this article, we present a study whose main objective is to evaluate the accuracy of the bioacoustic method over the visual method to record the macroactivity of grazing cattle ingestive behavior. The comparison of the methods is made in terms of a multivariate statistical approach based on the use of Hotelling’s T2 test. To verify the test performance in comparing the methods, we developed a simulation study using a resampling approach. The results show that the bioacoustic method can be an effective alternative to the visual method, with the advantage of being a noninvasive method that also allows the analysis of the micro events of ingestive behavior.