Factors related to animal consumption in a pastoral system for fattening cattle in the southwestern province of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Information on variables related to beef cattle intake at the farm level in grazing systems is necessary in order to design appropriate forage management strategies. Nevertheless, this information is scarce due to the logistic difficulty to conduct experiments at this scale. An alternative to obtain this kind of information is collecting observational data from real farms in the context of quantitative experiments like this one. The objective was to describe the relationships between herbage mass, herbage allowance, dry matter content, animal selectivity, stocking rate and forage intake of mixed pastures and winter small grain forage crops in a beef cattle system of SW Buenos Aires Province (Pampa Region). In three commercial farms of this area, paddocks with similar mixed pastures and winter forage crops grazed by steers were selected. Herbage mass was clipped at ground level before and after each grazing event during one year. Daily herbage intake increased linearly to 2.5% LW when herbage allowance increased to 4.4% LW, thus 50-60% of the herbage mass was consumed. When herbage allowance was higher than 4.4%LW, only 30-40% of the herbage mass was consumed. Even when herbage mass was low, legumes were highly selected by cattle and herbage utilization was positively related to stocking rate without decreasing intake. On the contrary, herbage utilization and intake tended to decrease when high stocking rates were applied in winter small grain forage crops.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Jacobo, Elizabeth Juliana, Rodriguez, Adriana, Pacin, Fernando
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	spa
Published:	Asociacion Latinoamericana de Produccion Animal 2011
Online Access:	https://ojs.alpa.uy/index.php/ojs_files/article/view/638
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