Modern Holstein-origin dairy cows within grassland-based systems partition more feed nitrogen into milk and excrete less in manure

Xianjiang Chen, Graham Finney, Huiru Zheng, Haiying Wang, Alan W. Gordon, Conrad P. Ferris, Elizabeth Magowan, Tianhai Yan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

The objective was to determine whether modern Holstein-origin dairy cows, when managed within grassland-based systems, partitioned more feed nitrogen (N) into milk and excreted less in manure, in comparison to an earlier population of Holstein-origin dairy cows. Data used were collated from total diet digestibility studies undertaken in Northern Ireland from 1990 to 2002 (old dataset, n = 538) and from 2005 to 2019 (new dataset, n = 476), respectively. An analysis of variance indicated that cows in the new dataset partitioned a significantly higher proportion of consumed N into milk and excreted a lower proportion in urine and total manure, compared to cows in the old dataset. A second analysis using the linear regression revealed that in comparison to the old dataset, the new dataset had a lower slope in the relationship between N intake and N excretion in urine or total manure, while a higher slope in the relationship between N intake and milk N output. A third analysis used the combined data from both datasets to examine if there was a relationship between experimental year and N utilization efficiency. Across the period from 1990 to 2019, urine N/N intake and manure N/N intake significantly decreased, while milk N/N intake increased. These results indicate that modern Holstein-origin dairy cows utilize consumed N more efficiently than earlier populations. Thus, N excretion is likely to be overestimated if models developed from the old data are used to predict N excretion for modern dairy herds. Therefore, the final part of analysis involved using the new dataset to develop prediction models for N excretion based on N intake and farm level data (milk yield, live weight and dietary N concentration). These updated models can be used to estimate N excretion from modern Holstein-origin dairy cows within grassland-based dairy systems.
Original languageEnglish
Article number138561
Number of pages8
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume727
Early online date8 Apr 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 20 Jul 2020

Keywords

  • Grassland-based system
  • Holstein-origin cow
  • Manure nitrogen
  • Milk nitrogen
  • Prediction equation

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