Subclinical Ketosis on Dairy Cows in Transition Period in Farms with Contrasting Butyric Acid Contents in Silages

Table 1

Average chemical composition and standard deviation of diets and silages and fermentative characteristics of silages.

Variable	Diets	Maize silage	Grass silage	Ryegrass silage
	93	54	63	22
Dry matter (g/kg fresh matter)	521.5 ± 12.53	344.4 ± 4.99	350.4 ± 15.45	302.3 ± 13.54
Organic matter (g/kg DM)	920.2 ± 1.24	963.3 ± 1.08	881.2 ± 3.91	882.4 ± 7.80
Crude protein (g/kg DM)	155.7 ± 1.67	78.5 ± 0.97	112.3 ± 3.41	108.2 ± 9.80
Neutral detergent fibre (g/kg DM)	347.5 ± 11.58	438.8 ± 10.09	580.9 ± 5.84	541.0 ± 11.37
Acid detergent fibre (g/kg DM)	234.2 ± 7.71	255.8 ± 6.84	350.5 ± 3.10	331.9 ± 8.79
Starch (g/kg DM)	223.8 ± 4.27	347.2 ± 3.06	nd	nd
Metabolizable energy (MJ/kg DM)	10.8 ± 0.24	11.1 ± 0.01	9.9 ± 0.04	9.8 ± 0.09
pH	nd	3.8 ± 0.05	4.6 ± 0.08	4.3 ± 0.09
Lactic acid (g/kg DM)	nd	40.3 ± 2.00	32.7 ± 3.20	47.0 ± 4.31
Acetic acid (g/kg DM)	nd	15.0 ± 1.46	10.9 ± 1.24	10.5 ± 1.65
Butyric acid (g/kg DM)	nd	1.2 ± 0.50	25.5 ± 3.00	15.4 ± 2.42
Propionic acid (g/kg DM)	nd	0.3 ± 0.17	1.0 ± 0.31	1.4 ± 0.39

nd: not determined.