It's time to treat our cows like ruminants!

摘要

With growing pressure on wheat supplies, Dr Michael Marsden thinks now may be the time to radically review the diets we are feeding our cows. A sea-change in attitudes to feeding cattle is both essential and inevitable if dairy farmers are to survivein the new carbon-conscious world. "For too long farmers have cut grass silage without looking at the true cost of production," believes Michael Marsden from KW Alternative Feeds. "But the sheer volume of products that will come from the bio-fuels industry will be so immense that the bio-fuels companies will be searching for uses for these materials. With increasing energy costs, third and fourth cut grass silages will be out on a limb in terms of price." Behind Dr Marsden's assertion is an independentanalysis of preserved forage production undertaken by consultants CARA in West Wales and backed up by national data from Anderson Consultancy. The picture they paint is of rising input costs resulting in a cost per tonne of dry matter in the clamp ranging from 61 for first cut to 116 for fourth, which calls into question the viability of taking later cuts, believes Dr Marsden. (See Table 1.)