Effects of forage quantity and access-time restriction on feeding behaviour, feed efficiency, nutritional status, and dairy performance of dairy cows fed indoors

Summary

Optimising feed is a key challenge for dairy livestock systems, as forage stock shortages are increasingly frequent and feed is the biggest operating cost. The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of reducing forage quantity and access time on dairy performance and animal nutritional status during indoor feeding. Twenty-seven Montbéliarde and Holstein cows were randomly allocated to three groups of nine cows balanced by breed, parity, days in milk, and milk yield. The three groups were given 3.9 kg DM/day of second-cut hay and 4.5 kg/day of concentrate and either i) ad libitum access to first-cut hay (Ad Libitum group; AL), ii) 10.5 kg/day of first-cut hay (Quantity-restricted group; QR), or iii) 10.5 kg/day of first-cut hay but with access time restricted to only 2 h in the