Nutritive value of corn silage from intensive dairy farms in Brazil

Abstract

-The objective of this research was to characterize the nutritive value of corn silage made on intensive dairy farms and demonstrate the nutritional variations between silages located at the top and at the center of a bunker silo. Thirty-two dairy farms were visited in four Brazilian states. One corn bunker silo of each farm was chosen and samples were collected from the top and center parts. The nutritive value, fermentation end-products, and microbial counts were assessed. The predicted milk was determined by Milk2006 spreadsheet. The mean, standard deviation, maximum, minimum, and 95% confidence interval of all data were calculated. The ash, neutral detergent fiber (NDF), starch, in vitro NDF, and dry matter (DM) digestibility data were compared with reference value. Both statistical procedures were performed through the PROC MEANS of SAS. The mean values found at the center for NDF, starch, total digestible nutrients (TDN -1x ), and estimated milk were 503 g kg −1 DM, 308 g kg −1 DM, 583 g kg −1 , and 1,124 kg t −1 , respectively. The top silages presented a mean TDN -1x and predicted milk of 559 g kg −1 and 1046 kg t −1 , respectively. For NDF digestibility and starch concentration, 53.1% and 62.5% of the center samples presented a value equal to or above the reference value (500 g kg −1 and 300 g kg −1 DM for NDF digestibility and starch concentration, respectively). Overall, the corn silage produced on intensive dairy farms in Brazil has satisfactory nutritive value, especially in terms of starch concentration. Some parameters, such as the concentration of fiber and its digestibility, should be improved. This study also shows that a silo may contain two different types of silage: top and center. This alerts nutritionists and farmers when feeding and sampling corn silage from bunker silos.

Row Arrangements of Maize and Soybean Intercrop on Silage Quality and Grain Yield

“…Maize and soybean are the most common grain crops in Brazil. Maize is the most used forage crop worldwide due to its many advantages such as high dry matter yield, high energy content, consistent-palatable feed, reduced total feed cost, rapid harvest and storability potential (Lempp et al, 2000), although, its low crude protein content may play a limitation on its use (Lempp et al, 2000;Evangelista et al, 2005;Oliveira et al, 2017).…”

Dry Season Feeding Technologies: Assessing the Nutritional and Economic Benefits of Feeding Hay and Silage to Dairy Cattle in South-Western Uganda

“…Recent literature [19] [34] [35] reports CP of silage of Napier grass as ranging from 7.01% -13.9%. Equally, Mediksa et al [34], De Oliveira et al [36] and Wei et al [37] observed that maize silage had CP in the range of 6.1% -9.7% and ME of up to 17.6 MJ/kg. Our findings of 13.7% CP for Napier grass and 9.38% CP for maize and the energy values of 9.80 and 9.60 MJ/kg, respectively, corroborate results in the earlier studies.…”

Minerals and potentially toxic elements in corn silage from tropical and subtropical Brazil

“…Despite major relevance, there is a lack of information about the mineral composition of the corn silage produced in Brazil, with most studies focusing on biochemical aspects (Costa et al, 2017;De Oliveira et al, 2017;Pontes et al, 2018), dry matter production, and presence of mycotoxins (Schmidt et al, 2015). Besides, nutrient concentrations of corn plant results from technological level applied by the producer and breeding evolution (Ferreira et al, 2014;Woli et al, 2019), suggesting a need to constantly update reference values.…”

“…They analyzed 327 samples from five Brazilian dairy-producing regions and found highly variable ash content (averaging 3.3% of DM) from 1.1 (minimum) to 10.9% of DM (maximum). De Oliveira et al (2017) analyzed thirty-two corn silage samples from Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul states and concluded that corn silage produced on intensive dairy farms in Brazil had satisfactory nutritive value for tropical climate conditions, but had greater content of neutral detergent fiber and lower digestibility compared with silages from the United States. Schmidt et al (2015) reported highly variable chemical composition for all evaluated parameters.…”