Effects of mineral supplementation on cattle performance when grazed mature wheat

Cheng, Long, Guevellou, Paul Alexandre, Zhong, Rongzhen, Cullen, Brendan, Desfreres, Jeremy, Jhajj, Ravneet Kaur, and Talukder, Saranika (2020) Effects of mineral supplementation on cattle performance when grazed mature wheat. Journal of Applied Animal Research, 48 (1). pp. 587-592.

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Abstract

This research paper addresses the hypothesis that mineral supplementation (sodium chloride and magnesium oxide at 1:1 weight ratio) for dairy heifers grazing mature wheat in the spring-summer period will improve live weight gain compared with the non-supplemented group. In addition, the potential of mineral supplementation to reduce environmental pollution through diluting urinary nitrogen content was evaluated in this study. The grazing study was conducted at the Dookie Campus, The University of Melbourne, Australia between September and November 2017. The study comprised two temporal trial replications with two dietary treatments; graze wheat with (supplemented, SUP) or without mineral supplementation (control, CTR). The first and second trial replications used 22 and 24 heifers, respectively to conduct a 22-day and 21-day weight gain measurement. Heifers in the CTR group had 11% lower daily water intake than those in the SUP group. No differences were observed in heifers’ weight gain and urinary nitrogen content and excretion. The study indicates that protein deficiency may override the mineral deficiency when heifer grazed mature wheat, and this may have led to no mineral supplementation effect on heifer performance. The level of protein in grazing wheat needs to be considered in feeding minerals to heifers.

Item ID: 82315
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 0974-1844
Keywords: dairy heifer, mixed farming, nitrogen excretion, Salt, urine volume
Copyright Information: © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited: 26 Mar 2024 23:30
FoR Codes: 30 AGRICULTURAL, VETERINARY AND FOOD SCIENCES > 3003 Animal production > 300303 Animal nutrition @ 100%
SEO Codes: 10 ANIMAL PRODUCTION AND ANIMAL PRIMARY PRODUCTS > 1004 Livestock raising > 100402 Dairy cattle @ 100%
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