Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

Abstract
RAHMANN G & GODINHO D (Ed.) (2012): Tackling the Future Challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry.
Proceedings of the 2 nd OAHC, Hamburg/Trenthorst, Germany, Sep 12-14, 2012
Feed no Food - influence of minimized concentrate feeding on
animal health and performance of Swiss organic dairy cows
CHRISTOPHE NOTZ, ARIANE MAESCHLI, PAMELA STAEHLI, MICHAEL WALKENHORST,
PETER KLOCKE, SILVIA IVEMEYER,
Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau (FiBL), Frick, Switzerland
christophe.notz@fibl.org; www.fibl.org
Concentrate feeding (crops, soybeans etc.) is an integral part of the current dairy cow feeding system
and the demand for increases yearly. In Switzerland the self-sufficiency of feed crops production
decreases continuously and more than 50% of concentrated feed must be imported. The objective
of this project was to evaluate the effect of feeding rations without or with reduced shares of
concentrate on health, fertility and performance of Swiss organic dairy cows. In total, 69 farms
have been analyzed in this study. The results show a significant average reduction of concentrate by
24% or 88kg dry matter (DM) per cow and year. This reduction has no negative influence on animal
health and fertility. Milk contents (protein, fat, urea) remained unchanged and milk yield decreased
slightly by an average of 0.5% or 0.1 kg per cow and day.
Key words: Organic dairy, minimized concentrate feeding, milk yield, animal health, fertility/
Introduction
One third of the worldwide crop production is used in animal feeding. Hence animal feeding is in
concurrence to human alimentation (FAO, 2008). Ruminants are the only livestock category which
is able to produce high quality food from pasture and hay without concurrence to human nutrition.
Furthermore the digestive tract of ruminants is not adapted to digest a lot of highly digestible starch.
This feedstuff could lead to rumen acidosis (Gozho et al., 2007; Bramley et al., 2008). On the other
hand during the onset of lactation dairy cows show a low dry matter (DM) intake which leads to
low energy availability (Gross et al., 2011). This negative energy balance can be accompanied by
health disorders (Bertoni et al., 2009). The domestic production of crops for concentrate feeding in
Switzerland decreased severely since 1990 and the current self-sufficiency of feed crops production
is less than 50% (Agrarbericht, 2011). In Swiss organic agriculture the self-sufficiency is even lower
(Dierauer et al., 2008). Particularly protein plants like soybeans are often imported from countries
hosting large rainforest areas where crop production is causing deforestation. The objectives of
this project were to evaluate the effect of feeding rations without or with reduced concentrate shares
on health, fertility and performance of Swiss organic dairy cows..
Material and Methodology
73 farms of the pro-Q farm network participated in this study. In the final analysis 69 farms were
included, 4 farms were excluded because of lack of some data. In the beginning of the study each
farmer could choose to join one of the following groups.
1. Total abandonment of concentrate feeding
2. Reduction of concentrate feeding to a maximum of 5% of the total yearly DM feeding ration
3. Keeping the status of concentrate feeding at about 10% of the yearly DM feeding ration (control
group in accordance to Organic regulations of Bio Suisse in Switzerland, 2012)
4. Already concentrate-free feeding farms with intention to optimize animal health and fertility
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