Abstract
The study, conducted on 70 smallholder dairy farms in Northern Ethiopia, aimed to evaluate whether variation in milk yield (in early and mid-lactation) of multiparous Holstein–Friesian crossbred cows is related to diet composition and quality. At early stage (1–120 days in milk (DIM)), a total of 70 dairy farms were used, while at mid-lactation (121–240 DIM), 54 dairy farms continued to be part of the study. K-means clustering was applied to group the cows based on energy-corrected milk yield (ECMY) into three milk production farm clusters (MPFC): Low MPFC (5.7–9.3 L/day), medium MPFC (9.4–12.8 L/day), and high MPFC (12.9–17.6 L/day). The dry matter intake (DMI) of cows during early lactation for high MPFC and low MPFC was 14.1 and 11.2 kg/day, respectively. The dietary proportion of crop residues in diets offered to crossbred cows tended to be lower in the high MPFC during early as well as in mid-lactation. Cows from the high MPFC consumed diets with higher (rumen degradable) protein levels both in early and in mid-lactation, while dietary fiber fractions and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) only differed in early lactation. Multiple regression models indicated that DMI (kg/day) in combination with either neutral detergent fiber, crude protein, or IVDMD (g/kg DM) explained about 25% of the variation in daily ECMY expressed relative to body weight (mL/kg). Hence, higher milk production is linked to both increased DMI and better quality of diets.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our appreciation to Prof Mark Breusers, promoter of the VLIR-UOS South Initiatives project, for his cooperation during the research work. The technical support on lab analysis provided by Lanupro lab technicians, Charlotte Melis and Erik Claeys, are highly appreciated. The authors would like to extend their heartfelt gratitudes to the dairy farmers involved in the study.
Funding
Alemayehu Tadesse received a PhD scholarship provided by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University. The authors also received financial support from the VLIR-UOS South Initiatives project to carry out the farm data collection.
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Conceptualization and design of the study: Veerle Fievez (VF), Alemayehu Tadesse (AT), and Yayneshet Tesfay (YT); data collection: AT; data analysis and interpretation: AT and VF; writing—original draft preparation: AT; writing—review and editing: VF, YT, and AT; funding acquisition: VF and AT; and supervision: VF and YT. All authors read and approved the final manuscript and were also aware of its submission to Tropical Animal Health and Production.
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Tadesse, A., Tesfay, Y. & Fievez, V. Exploring dietary quality characteristics related to milk yield of crossbred cows in Ethiopian smallholder farms: a clustering and multivariate analysis approach. Trop Anim Health Prod 54, 89 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-021-02874-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-021-02874-1