Energy balance modelling in cattle supplementary feeding.

Author(s)

Thiago Liborio Romanelli

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Piracicaba.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALA/BC)
• Defense date: 2003-01-16

Examining board members

Marcos Milan; Luiz Gustavo Nussio

• Advisor: Marcos Milan

Abstract

The need in producing food to supply the increasing demand has been one of the most important problems of mankind. Since the first oil chock, in 1973, there is worry about the energy consumption, because of the lack of energy sources, which threatens the sustainability of the present-day production systems. The energy balance has a important role to evaluate how efficient the energy use by a production system is. And it is determined through the quantification of the income and outcome energy flows. Brazil is the second biggest cattle meat producer and the sixth milk producer. Because of the economic importance of cattle raising in Brazil, there is a great worry about supplementary food to be supplied to cattle during the dry season. To reach this goal, maize silage is one of the most used methods. In addition to the traditional methods, like silage and hay, more modern techniques were created such as haylage, which is used mainly with grasses and has its production system too similar to the hay’s. But haylage requires shorter time to dry, avoiding losses in quantity and quality in the vegetal material that will be collected. The present work evaluated the energetic efficiency in two different production systems of supplementary food to cattle, identifying critical variables and suggesting alternative scenarios. Maize silage presented a gross energybalance of 14.08, what means a outcome energy 15.08 times higher than the income one. haylage presented a gross energy balance of - 0.98, what means a income energy 1.98 times higher than the outcome one. When the really available energy to cattle was considered through the TDN levels, maize silage and haylage presented energy balances of 9.12 and -0.99, respectively. The highest energy demand in the maize silage production was the fertilizer spreading during the seeding and field cultivation, responsible for 49.34% and 24.06%, respectively. In the haylage production system irrigation was the most demanding operation since it was responsible for 99.72% of the total demanded energy. The daily energy balance, which aims to consider the soil occupation period, was 0.087 to maize silage, and -0.022 to haylage (Tifton 85). The same parameters regarding the effective energy available to cattle, via TDN, were 0.057 and -0.022, respectively. (AU)