The feeding of Sisal Waste Silage, Maize Silage And Rhodes Grass Hay to Lactating Dairy Cows

The effect of feeding sisal silage, maize silage and Rhodes grass hay as supplements to lactating dairy cows grassing on pasture for 51/2h was studied for a period of 17 weeks. The in vivo dry matter and organic matter digestibility of sisal pulp silage were found to be 55.78 and 61.42 percent, respectively. These value were similar to the digestibility coefficients of maize silage, but being significantly lower (p<0.05) than those of Rhodes grass hay. The maximum voluntary feed intake of sisal pulp silage was 4kgIM/day at one period, but on average intake for the whole study was 2.052kg IM/Cow/day. Total voluntary intake of supplementary roughages was improved substantially when sisal pulp silage was fed together with either maize silage or Rhodes grass hay. Metabolizable energy (ME) intake from supplementary roughages. Surprisingly, milk production level of intakes of the roughages. Surprisingly, milk production levels were more or less maintained at the same levelof approximately 11.5 kg fat corrected milk (FCM) throughout the study inspite of the fluctuations in Metabolizable Energy (ME) intakes. This indicated that the cows probably increased their intakes from grazing. The milk composition was not affected by the type of roughages fed although there were inconsistent differences in solids-not fat and total ash contents. In this experiment it is conclude that sisal waste silage is satisfactory supplementary roughage to grazing lactating dairy cows