Background

With this background knowledge a series of studies was initiated to investigate whether milk production could be increased by changing the ways in which concentrates were fed. These studies are described in this Case study.

Rather than feed at a fixed rate throughout lactation it was proposed that it would be better for all the concentrates to be fed for a defined period during early lactation at a considerably higher rate than the 2 kg/day commonly used by farmers, and with none after this period had ended.

A field study was therefore planned to determine whether such a reallocation of concentrates was feasible under on-farm conditions and whether the dairy cooperatives to which farmers sold their milk would be willing to cooperate by providing concentrates on credit up front (Romney et al., 2005).