An article in the Milk Manager newsletter about Alternative Forages. As markets and consumer expectations of agriculture change, this will likely affect some of the concentrate feeds, especially components such as soya, that are a staple of dairy cow diets. However, there is still a demand for protein. If more of this can be grown on farm there is less reliance on imported protein sources, reducing the carbon footprint of the feed as well as limiting exposure to price fluctuations from imported

more »

... feeds i.e. soya from South America. Additionally, more distillery grains, a traditional high protein feed, are now being used in anaerobic digesters and the resultant digestate is too low in energy to be used as a feed for cattle. Forage proteins such as white clover and lucerne have been proven to improve feed intake, feed conversion efficiency and increase productivity among ruminants, therefore could other crops and mixtures of crops be used to provide this protein?