The response of growing dairy heifers to frequency of feeding

At least five million heifers are raised annually in the United States to maintain the dairy cattle population and provide for our future needs. These animals are in reality the very foundation of the dairy business and the prosperity of everyone connected with it are dependent, at least to a certain extent, upon how well and how economically these animals are produced. Any practice that might possibly increase the efficiency with which these animals are raised is certainly worthy of thorough study and consideration. In the past the livestockman has paid little attention to the effect that frequency of feeding may have on the efficiency with which his animals convert feed to milk, meat, and. eggs. This is surprising when one considers the feeding behavior of the animal in its native or unconfined state. In its wild state the animal took in food throughout the day and also undoubtedly at night. The quantity eaten and the frequency of intake was entirely dependent upon the desire of the animal and the availability of feed. This condition still exists to a very large extent in the case of the free-grazing animal. However, with the closely confined or hand-fed animal both the quantity of feed eaten and the frequency of intake are regulated according to the judgment of the husbandman. Since this is a definite change from the feeding habits of the animal in its native state, it is conceivable that some change in the efficiency of feed utilization, if not the overall physiology, of the animal has occurred as a result of domestication. Like the livestockman the research worker has considered frequency of feeding to have little or no influence on his research results. A limited amount of work (15, 70, 27) has demonstrated that frequency of feeding is important in livestock production. If additional work confirms these results, it will become necessary to interpret past feeding experiments in the light of these new findings and to give more attention to frequency of feeding in future nutritional research. Such information would be of considerable practical importance since it would be a comparatively simple matter to design automatic feeders which would feed animals at periodic intervals. The present study was initiated to obtain data on the differences in body weight gain, digestion coefficients, heart rate, rectal temperature, rumination time, and rate of passage of food of dairy heifers fed equalized intakes of feed two and ten times daily.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Dairy Science

Department dc:contributor.department

Dairy Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Year dc:date.issued

1957

Author dc:creator

• Rakes, Allen H.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/52207

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/52207