Silage and milk production: studies with diets containing white clover silage

In three separate feeding experiments using a total of twenty‐six individually‐housed Ayrshire cows, three wilted silages made from Blanca white clover were offered ad libitum with either different supplements or different proportions of grass silage. The clover silages contained 680 g white clover kg −1 on a DM basis, and had a mean DM concentration of 263 g kg −1 with 231 g CP kg −1 DM and 91 g ammonia‐N kg −1 N. The pH values averaged 4·16 and the DOMD concentrations 611 g kg −1 . In experiment 1 the daily intake of clover silage given alone was 15.2 kg DM per cow, i.e. 30·1 g kg −1 live weight, and decreased by 0·76 kg DM kg −1 barley DM and by 0·66 kg DM kg −1 barley plus soybean meal DM when these feeds were offered as supplements. Milk yield and fat concentration were higher on the supplement treatments than on the clover silage‐only treatment. In experiments 2 and 3 the intakes of silage and total DM increased as the weight of clover in the diet increased from 0 to 700 g kg −1 with parallel increases in milk yield. The effects on milk composition were small and generally non‐significant. Although white clover silages with excellent fermentations were made, it is concluded that the main role of white clover in a silage system will be in mixed swards with grass to reduce the input of fertilizer N and to increase the voluntary intake of silage.