Nutritive value of forage species grown in the warm temperate climate of Australia for dairy cows: Herbs and grain crops

The objective of this study was to quantify the nutritive characteristics of 6 grain crops and 4 herb forages over 4 seasons, when all species were grown at the same site, under the same climatic and edaphic conditions, and with soil moisture and nutrient availability being non-limiting to growth. The forages grown were maize (Zea mays), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), millet (Pennisetum americana), wheat (Triticum aestivum), triticale (Triticum × secale), oats (Avena sativa), fodder radish (Raphanu sativa), rape (Brassica rapa), chicory (Cachorium intybus) and plantain (Plantago lanceolata). The in sacco degradation characteristics of organic matter (OM) and crude protein of herbages were measured in the rumen of cannulated sheep in order to calculate the availability of effective rumen degradable protein (ERDP), rumen by pass protein, metabolisable protein (MP) and the synchrony index (Is), which describes the efficiency of utilization of degradable nitrogen (N) and OM for microbial protein synthesis (MPS) in the rumen.In this study, all grain crops except maize had a ERDP/fermentable metabolizable energy (FME) ratio varying from 14 for millet to 23 for wheat, well above the ratio of 11 required for optimum MPS in the rumen of dairy cows. In contrast, maize had the lowest ERDP/FME ratio of 3, indicating that ERDP would be limiting MPS in the rumen. The availability of MP varied from 58 g/kg DM in maize to 153 g/kg DM in wheat and all forage species except maize were be able to meet the MP requirement of high-producing dairy cows (30 L/milk/day) provided they were able to consume 11 to13 kg DM/cow/day of the forage.The availability of MP from herbs varied from 95 g/kg DM in fodder radish to 163 g/kg DM in plantain, which would be sufficient for high-producing cows, however, most dairy cows could not consume sufficient forage to achieve these high levels of production due to very high nitrate content in rape (mean of 11.1 g/kg DM) and fodder radish (mean of 8 g/kg DM).