Replacing cereals and soybean meal with sugar beet pulp and rapeseed meal or distiller´s grain in grass silage diets to dairy cows

Introduction Large volumes of human-edible products as cereal grains and soya beans are fed to dairy cows in intensive production systems (Eisler et al., 2014). Given the predicted increase in demand for livestock products and competition of land for food and feed, human inedible feeds are becoming increasingly important. Ruminants have a unique ability to produce high quality food, as milk and meat, from fibrous feed and other products not suitable for human consumption. Substituting human edibles with by-products as feed for ruminants substantially increase the net food production (human edible output minus human edible input) (Ertl et al., 2016). The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on feed intake and milk production when human-edible feeds as cereal grain and soy beans was completely substituted with different blends of by-products as sugar beet pulp, rape seed meal and distillers grains in a high quality forage diet.