SPECIAL STORY 66 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE November 2023 “As the commitment to net zero by 2050 grows ever stronger, so does the spotlight and pressure on producers to reduce livestock emissions. Improving overall efficiency – specifically, efficiency fibre utilisations – helps honour this commitment, while acting as a means to support the sustainability of livestock production.” For many years enteric methane emissions have been pointed out as the main source of carbon emissions in the livestock industry, hence the growing pressure for reducing methane emissions associated with ruminants. Although fibre highly contributes to enteric methane emissions, fibre remains a key component in maintaining rumen function and cow health, and an extremely important energy source – a substantial part of the energy for milk production is extracted from fibre. So, producers are faced with ongoing environmental pressures, while balancing commercial pressures of having to increase performance and harvest more energy. Suggestions for the industry for the former issue have included reducing methane through alternative feeds, and reducing food loss and waste – which is where forage presents an interesting solution, producing more from less and making the best use of resources. Ingesting forage – grass, silages, legumes and more – allows ruminants to transform these non-human-edible energy sources into energy, as they can digest carbohydrates contained in plant cell walls. And, in turn, humans consume this in the form of meat and milk. Making greater use of forage also allows the use of resources which would not be consumed otherwise – a unique form of “upcycling”. FORAGE QUALITY CHARACTERISATION Forage is essential to promote rumen function and health in cattle. We know plant cell wall digestibility is often lower than 50%. With a proper characterisation and valorisation of the nutrients and digestible energy contained in forage, forage utilisation efficiency and ration formulation can be improved, and in turn contribute to a better feed efficiency and feed cost. Portable near infrared (NIR) instruments are now used on farm to determine forage quality. When analysing forage by NIR, nutritionists can quickly adjust formulation. As an example, we compared the quality of grass silage from the UK in 2021 and 2022. Figure 1 shows the lower metabolizable energy (ME) content as a percentage of dry matter and Figure 2 shows neutral detergent fibre (NDF) content as a percentage of dry matter – which were promptly noticed upon harvest with the NIR. This THE IMPACT OF FORAGE ON CARBON EMISSIONS IN RUMINANTS Virginie Blanvillain Global Services Manager AB Vista
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