The age at first consumption of forage in calves and its effect on growth and rumination in the short- and long-term

Table 4 Effect of the age at first forage consumption on nutrient intake during the calf period

Item	Treatment				SEM	P value
Item	CON	EHAY	MHAY	LHAY	SEM	Trt	Time¹	Trt × Time
Calf period (d 1 to 84)
CP intake, g/d	426.0	401.2	406.8	425.8	10.2	0.19	< 0.01	0.44
Fat intake, g/d	251.0	248.3	250.6	254.8	2.20	0.26	< 0.01	0.23
Starch intake, g/d	307.7	266.6	271.7	293.6	15.3	0.18	< 0.01	0.40
NDF intake, g/d	162.1^a	184.5^ab	191.7^ab	209.6^b	11.2	0.05	< 0.01	< 0.01
peNDF intake², g/d	-	17.5	19.0	21.6	3.27	0.76	< 0.01	< 0.01
ADF intake, g/d	100.1	110.5	114.4	125.0	6.50	0.09	< 0.01	< 0.01
ME intake, Mcal/d	6.88	6.68	6.78	7.06	0.13	0.24	< 0.01	0.53

CON = Calves were fed starter concentrate without forage from d 1 to 84, HAY = Starter concentrate and forage were fed to calves free choice from d 1 to 84; EHAY = Calves began to consume forage at the earliest (from d 4 to 6), MHAY = Calves began to consume the forage from d 7 to 9, LHAY = Calves began to consume forage at latest (from d 10 to 15) time possible
¹For all variables, data were summarized by week
²Since CON were not fed hay, data analysis was restricted to the HAY groups only
^a,bMeans within a row with different superscripts are significantly different (P ≤ 0.05)

ISSN: 2049-1891