By Rolf Spörndly
Animal nutrition expert at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and heads the Feed Advisory Service at a farmers’ cooperative. He provides advice on feed strategy and milk production to about 2,000 dairy farms in central Sweden.

A general ambition in organic dairy production is to increase the intake of roughage and decrease the intake of concentrates.

Limiting the concentrates offered will automatically increase the intake of roughage, if it is offered without restriction. It is common to count on a substitution rate of 0.5 – 0.8kg DM, which means that for each kg DM of concentrate you decrease, the roughage intake is increased by 0.5 – 0.8kg DM.

Farmers widely report that the cows increase their roughage intake if they are presented with roughages of different qualities. In organic farming in particular, the differences between ley harvests are pronounced.

The most common mixture is grass/clover and, as the grass usually grows faster in the spring, it results in grass-dominated silage. At the second cut, and even more at the third cut, the clover becomes dominant. Apart from texture differences, this results in a significant difference in protein content in the crop. An increase from 11% crude protein (cp) to over 19% cp in the DM is not uncommon. Mixing silages helps to even out the differences or, for example, silage from the second cut can be fed in the morning and from the first cut in the afternoon.

The intake of leguminous silage is normally higher than the intake of pure grass silage.

Feed Allotments Month by Month during the Lactation for Cows with Concentrate Restricted According to Organic Rules in Sweden

The Figure to the right illustrates a common feeding regime for cows in organic production. The fixed amounts of concentrates are in accordance with the rules for organic farming in Sweden. The one, two or three kinds of silage given for voluntary intake are shown on top. The main challenge for the farmer is to test which silages will give the best intake and milk production.

Conserving the silage in packages, such as bales, is a great advantage when feeding dairy cows in line with these principles. Baled silage allows the farmer to use silage from one, two, three or even more harvests at the same time. This is not possible when the silage is stored in a clamp or silo. With these storage systems, the farmer must also take a significant amount every day in order to avoid it being destroyed by heat. The normal practice when emptying silos is therefore to empty one silo at a time.

In the example the total feed fed during the lactation is:

First Cut Silage 2,440 kg DM
Second Cut Silage 2,200 kg DM
Rolled Grain 825 kg
Peas 885 kg
Protein Concentrate 366 kg
Mineral Feed 67 kg

This covers the requirements for 9,000kg2 milk production. The level of milk production depends on the amount of forage the cows eat. Early cut grass silage with clover silage is known to give high intake.

In conventional milk production, higher forage intake is considered to decrease milk production, because increased forage levels result in lower concentrate consumption. Organic milk production has a fixed amount of concentrates and we often are surprised by the capacity cows have to produce milk on roughage.

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