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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center » Environmentally Integrated Dairy Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #372414
Research Project: Improving Nutrient Use Efficiency and Mitigating Nutrient and Pathogen Losses from Dairy Production Systems

Location: Environmentally Integrated Dairy Management Research

Title: Effects of preservative application on storage characteristics of alfalfa hays marginally too moist for acceptable storage

Author
item Coblentz, Wayne
item AKINS, MATTHEW - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: Journal of Dairy Science
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/12/2020
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Spontaneous heating in dry hays is often exacerbated by the increased size of large hay packages commonly used today. Our objective was to evaluate a propionic-acid-based preservative applied to large-round bales of alfalfa hay at an initial bale moisture marginally too moist (20.2%) for satisfactory storage of this large bale type. Twenty-eight 1.5- × 1.5-m round bales of alfalfa hay were made with a completely randomized allocation of 2 treatments: i) fully automated application of a propionic-acid-based preservative (FA; N = 16); or ii) untreated controls (CTRL; N = 12). Although all acid-treated hays exhibited temperature suppression during the first 25 d of storage, 9 FA bales continued to accumulate heating degree days > 30oC (HDD) throughout the entire 65-d storage period (FAH), while 7 bales did not (FAU), ceasing at 43 ± 15.8 d in storage. As a result, a 3-way post-hoc analysis was conducted using nonparametric exact Kruskal-Wallis tests to compare the 3 bale categories (CTRL, FAH, FAU). The FAH and FAU bales differed with respect to total accumulated HDD (616 vs. 236 HDD; P < 0.001), where FAH bales did not differ (P = 0.932) from CTRL hays (628 HDD). Although the FAH bales exhibited immediate temperature suppression, a secondary heating response between 25 and 65 d in storage partially explained these undesirable heating responses in FAH hays. Changes in NDF, ADL, and energy density (TDN) during storage were closely associated with heating characteristics; concentrations of NDF and ADL increased by 8.7 and 1.26 percentage units for CTRL bales, which differed (P = 0.045) from respective changes (6.4 and 1.07 percentage units) in FAU hays; again, FAH and CTRL bales did not differ (P = 0.277) in these respects. Greatest losses in TDN were observed in CTRL bales (4.5 units), which differed from FAU hays (3.4 units; P = 0.045), but not from FAH hays (4.1 units; P = 0.508). The secondary and extended heating response exhibited by some FAH hays partially explains the mixed overall responses to preservative application in this and some previous experiments.