Nutrient Requirements of Domesticated Ruminants

295 Pages·2007·2.63 MB·English

by  Csiro

N Nutrient
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Nutrient Requirements of Domesticated Ruminants draws on the most up-to-date r Requirements
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research on the energy, protein, mineral, vitamin and water requirements of beef e
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and dairy cattle, sheep and goats. It defi nes the responses of animals, in weight
of Domesticated
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change, milk production and wool growth, to quantitative and qualitative changes
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in their feed supply. It has particular application to grazing animals. e
Ruminants
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Factors aff ecting the intake of feed are taken into account and
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recommendations are given according to the production systems being used; i
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for instance, the feed intake of a grazing animal is aff ected by a larger number e
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of variables than a housed animal. Examples of the estimation of the energy and
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nutrients required for the diff erent production systems are given, as well as the
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production expected from predicted feed intakes. Th e interactions between the t
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grazing animal, the pasture and any supplementary feeds are complex, involving
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herbage availability, diet selection and substitution. To facilitate the application f

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of these recommendations to particular grazing situations, readers are directed
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to decision support tools and spreadsheet programs.
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Nutrient Requirements of Domesticated Ruminants is based on the benchmark
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publication, Feeding Standards for Australian Livestock: Ruminants, published in s
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1990 by CSIRO PUBLISHING on behalf of the Standing Committee on Agriculture. i
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It provides comprehensive and useful information for graziers, livestock a
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advisors, veterinarians, feed manufacturers and animal nutrition researchers. e
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Th e recommendations described are equally applicable to animals in feedlots

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or drought yards.
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Nutrient
Requirements
of Domesticated
Ruminants
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© CSIRO 2007
All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and
subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for all
permission requests.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Nutrient requirements of domesticated ruminants.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 9780643092624 (pbk.).
1. Ruminants – Nutrition – Requirements – Australia. 2.
Livestock – Nutrition – Requirements – Australia. 3.
Ruminants – Feeding and feeds – Australia. 4. Livestock –
Feeding and feeds – Australia. I. CSIRO.
636.20840994
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General introduction
This publication represents a revision of the report entitled ‘Feeding Standards for Australian
Livestock. Ruminants’ that was issued in 1990 by CSIRO Publishing in conjunction with the
Standing Committee on Agriculture. That report was produced in response to a resolution by
the Standing Committee on Agriculture to establish an Animal Production Committee Working
Party for the Introduction of Nationally Uniform Feeding Standards for Livestock (INUFSL).
The Working Party, whose members are listed in the earlier report, established fi ve subcommit-
tees, one of which, with J.L. Corbett as Convenor, was instructed to prepare a report on the
implementation of feeding systems for ruminants, based on metabolizable energy and to
develop corresponding standards for protein.
In the 17 years since that report was published much new material on the nutrient require-
ments of ruminants has become available and the earlier publication is in need of revision.
Although the Animal Production Committee no longer exists, a small editorial committee
comprising M. Freer, H. Dove and J.V. Nolan, two of whom were members of the original sub-
committee, has, with the agreement of CSIRO Publishing, attempted in this publication to bring
the earlier report up to date.
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Foreword to this edition
Despite major changes to some sections of the earlier report, this publication remains very
largely the work of John Corbett, the Convenor of the Ruminants Subcommittee. The aims of
this report are still those set out in his original Foreword, which is reprinted below. For several
years he had been working towards the preparation of a revised edition but unfortunately died
before this could be achieved. It has been left to the current editorial committee to complete
this aim.
The changes that have been made to the earlier text stem partly from more recent research
in ruminant nutrition and partly from experience in applying the earlier recommendations.
In particular, use of the GrazFeed decision support tool (see Chapter 6), which was developed
as a computer-based implementation of the subcommittee’s recommendations for energy and
protein requirements and for the prediction of feed intake, has over the years revealed a number
of weaknesses in the earlier recommendations. The changes that have been made to GrazFeed to
increase the accuracy of these estimates have now, in turn, been incorporated in the new recom-
mendations for energy and protein.
In the title of this edition we have moved away from the concept of Feeding Standards
towards recommendations on nutrient requirements. As John Corbett indicated in the original
Foreword, there is a risk that the former term may be misunderstood as implying an infl exible
measure of what animals ought to be fed. There is also some risk of confusion with Australian
Standards as they are applied to such topics as animal feeds and animal health.
In addition to changes to the substance of the text, we have provided the reader with easy
access to spreadsheet programs that allow rapid application of the recommendations on energy,
protein and some of the major minerals to specifi c types of animal. We believe that this is more
useful than loading the text with large tables that can cover only a small proportion of the pos-
sible instances. This report also includes a comprehensive index.
I thank my co-editors for their work in coordinating this revision. Drafts for each chapter
were prepared and submitted for refereeing and amendment by readers appropriate for each
topic and we are sincerely grateful for their contributions to this report. In particular, G.J. Judson
and J.H. Ternouth made major contributions to the revision of Chapter 3.
M. Freer
Principal editor
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Foreword to Feeding Standards for Australian
Livestock: Ruminants
The Working Party on the Introduction of Nationally Uniform Feeding Standards for Livestock
was instructed ‘to implement feeding systems based on metabolizable energy’, and ‘to develop
corresponding standards for protein’ (Pryor 1980). It was understood that primary reference
bases for ruminants were to be the Technical Bulletin of the UK Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food on Energy Allowances and Feeding Systems for Ruminants (MAFF 1975) and
its antecedent, a Technical Review of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC 1965). The latter
publication was undergoing extensive revision, and the ARC generously provided a pre-publi-
cation copy of the new edition (ARC 1980). Information on new developments made in other
countries in feeding systems for ruminants also became available. The Ruminants Subcommittee
is indebted to Dr Jarrige for providing copies of Alimentation des Ruminants (INRA 1978);
Developments elsewhere in Europe were described in several publications, and in the USA the
National Research Council has continued to publish revised editions of its reports on the
Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals.
The Ruminants Subcommittee has gained much from correspondence and personal discus-
sions with many who made major contributions to reports from the UK, Europe and the USA.
We are most grateful to all who gave this help, which in a number of instances is identifi ed in this
Report as ‘personal communication’.
The Subcommittee acknowledges the unstinted assistance it has received from numerous
colleagues in Australia. Again their identities will be evident from references to personal com-
munications as well as to their published work, and our thanks are due especially to those who
have special knowledge of particular topics and have spent much time and effort in preparing
appropriate sections.
The Subcommittee, of course, takes responsibility for the Report as a whole. It can be viewed
as one of a family of reports on the feeding of ruminants, all of which have essentially the same
knowledge bases but individually incorporate the knowledge into systems that refl ect character-
istics of the livestock industries in their countries of origin. Because the majority of Australia’s
ruminant livestock obtain most or all of their feed directly from pasture, particular attention
has been paid to extending procedures for quantitative nutritional management to encompass
grazing animals. For example, with a housed animal it is necessary to know what amounts of
feeds with various qualities it can be expected to eat in order to formulate realistic rations for
desired levels of production. The feed intake by a grazing animal is affected by a much larger
number of variables including the quantity and spatial distribution of available herbage, and a
procedure for predicting the quantity and quality of pasture intake has been developed (Chapter
6). Grazing incurs an energy cost, and the development of means for estimating its magnitude
(Chapter 1) has conformed with a recommendation made at a conference on energy metabolism
held at the Pennsylvania State College in 1935 that ‘the net energy requirements of economic
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vi Nutrient Requirements of Domesticated Ruminants
maintenance be further investigated especially by the analysis of muscular activities incidental
to maintenance as affected by individuality, age, sex, breed, species, and confi nement or pasture’
(NRC 1935). The introduction of an allowance for variation with feed intake in the estimation
of the energy requirement for maintenance (Chapter 1), an ‘overhead’ cost that might better
be termed the ‘support metabolism’, is also consistent with the concept from the Pennsylvania
conference of ‘economic maintenance’. Another innovation is the characterisation of the various
breeds of animal and their sex type by a Standard Reference Weight. It is used as a basis for the
prediction of the composition and energy content of liveweight gains (Chapter 1) and of the
effect of growth promotants (Chapter 7); it is also used in the estimation of the change in live-
weight equivalent to a unit change in condition score (Chapter 1), the net protein requirements
for wool growth (Chapter 2), and in the prediction of feed intake (Chapter 6).
The feed available to many grazing animals in Australia is regularly of a much lower quality
than is allowed for in other reports. Thus the consideration of protein nutrition (Chapter 2)
includes guidelines for the use of protein and non-protein nitrogen supplements. Many animals
are also subject to problems in the availability and quality of water supplies (Chapter 5), and
inadequacies in their mineral nutrition are widespread (Chapter 3). An attempt has been made
to defi ne the nutrient requirements for wool production, a matter not considered in other than
general terms in reports from other countries because wool is regarded more as a by-product of
their sheep industries than, as in Australia, a product of prime importance.
Wool production is one of many topics where available information is inadequate. Similar
diffi culties in other reports have helped to focus attention on the experimental work that is
needed, and it is expected that this Report will have a similar effect.
The term ‘Feeding Standards’ in the title of this Report should not be misunderstood. The
purpose is not to determine infl exibly what an animal ‘ought’ to be fed. It is to facilitate the
description in quantitative, and therefore monetary, terms of the responses of animals to their
feed supplies and how changes in the supplies will affect animal performance. Some examples
are given of the estimation of the energy and nutrients required for particular production, and of
the production to be expected from predicted feed intakes. Extensive tabulation of requirements
and predictions of performance for the wide variety of production systems and environments
in Australia has not been attempted. It was the intention of the Working Party that this Report
would be used by the State Departments in the preparation of publications that give information
and advice appropriate for the systems of animal production that are their particular concerns.
Moreover, the recommendations in this Report are cast in forms that are readily programmed,
simplifying their use in both special and more general situations. Programs already exist (Chapter
7) and, as well as their use in practice, they facilitate what must be continuing tests of reliability
and modifi cations of the recommendations.
I thank sincerely my colleagues in the Subcommittee for their innumerable major contribu-
tions that jointly have brought this work to a conclusion. Funds for travel were, unfortunately,
not obtainable other than from our employing organisations. We are grateful to those who made
available the funds that did allow meetings, intermittently of individuals and, rarely, as a group.
The majority of the work was done by burdensome correspondence. However, such diffi cul-
ties were of small moment compared with the professional and personal enjoyments from our
collaboration.
J.L. Corbett
Convenor, Ruminants Subcommittee
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Editorial committee for this edition and
contributors
M. Freer, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, ACT 2601
H. Dove, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, ACT 2601
J.V. Nolan, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351
Contributors and referees
I.W. Caple J. Lee
E. Charmley S.J. McLennan
N.D. Costa N.P. McMeniman
N.D. Grace D.G. Masters
R.S. Hegarty J.J. Robinson
B.W. Hess J.H. Ternouth
G.J. Judson
Membership of original ruminants subcommittee and
contributors
J.L. Corbett (Convenor), CSIRO Animal Production, Armidale, NSW 2350
M. Freer, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, ACT 2601
D.W. Hennessy, NSW Agriculture and Fisheries, Grafton, NSW 2460
R.W. Hodge, Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Werribee, Victoria 3030
R.C. Kellaway, University of Sydney, Camden, NSW 2570
N.P. McMeniman, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4067
J.V. Nolan, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351
Major contributors
J.W. Bennett D.W. Peters
I.W. Caple D.B. Purser
B.F. Chick J.B. Rowe
J.W. Gawthorne J.H. Ternouth
G.J. Judson C.H. White
D.G. Masters
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Contents
General introduction iii
Foreword to this edition iv
Foreword to Feeding Standards for Australian Livestock: Ruminants v
Editorial committee for this edition and contributors vii
Membership of original ruminants subcommittee and contributors vii
Glossary xviii
Conversion factors xxii
1. Energy 1
Summary 1
Terminology 2
Descriptions of feed energy 2
Utilisation of feed energy by the animal 3
Animal requirements 4
Energy values of feeds 5
Gross energy (GE) 5
Digestibility and digestible energy (DE) 5
Dry matter digestibility (DMD) 6
Organic matter digestibility (OMD) 6
Digestible organic matter in dry matter (DOMD) 6
Metabolisable energy (ME, M/D) 7
Relationship with DE 7
Prediction of M/D from DMD, OMD and DOMD 7
Prediction of M/D from feed composition 9
Correction of silage analyses 9
Variation between grains 10
Milk and milk substitutes 11
Fodder trees and shrubs (browse) 11
Variation in M/D 12
Effect of grinding 12
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