With the demand for meat rising in countries like China and India, there is a shortage of protein in the marketplace. Therefore, one of the hopeful co-products of algal biofuels is algae meal. PetroAlgae has announced that after completion of a third-party feed trial, its micro-crop meal performs as well as alfalfa in dairy cattle diets. The global market for dairy feed from alfalfa alone is estimated at 400 million metric tons by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
The study encompassed a continuous 6-week feeding trial of a statistically significant sample of 36 dairy cows living in barns housed at the University of Minnesota. It measured the algae meal against a 17.5 percent protein alfalfa diet and measured nutrient intake, milk yield and composition. With the positive results, PetroAlgae anticipates its micro-crop meal will be highly competitive in the feed market.
The University of Minnesota study is the first to validate PetroAlgae micro-crop meal in the dairy diet against the industry standard. Several key findings included algae meal having higher dairy efficiency values, higher energy values than alfalfa, and algae meal matched the alfalfa diet in milk, milk yield, body score, and body weight.
“The results of this study show that PetroAlgae micro-crop meal is a desirable ingredient for high producing dairy cattle and that it performed comparably to high-protein alfalfa meal,” said Dr. Noah Litherland, who performed the study at the University of Minnesota. “We are encouraged to see this product perform so well against one of the more universally understood products in dairy nutrition.”
Litherland added, “There is also an intriguing opportunity to alter the lipid composition of the meat and milk for added human health benefit.”
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Tags: Agribusiness · BioFuels2 Comments
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Different cattle feeding production systems have separate advantages and disadvantages. Most cows have a diet that is composed of at least some forage (grass, legumes, or silage).
In fact most beef cattle are raised on pasture from birth in the spring until autumn (7 to 9 months). Then for pasture-fed animals, grass is the forage that composes all or at least the fantastic majority of their diet. Cattle fattened in feedlots are fed small amounts of hay or straw supplemented with grain, soy and other ingredients in order to increase the energy density of the diet.
The debate is whether cattle should be raised on diets primarily composed of pasture (grass) or a concentrated diet of grain, soy, corn and other supplements. The issue is often complicated by the political interests and confusion between marks such as “free range”, “organic”, or “natural”.
Cattle raised on a primarily forage diet are termed grass-fed or pasture-raised; for example meat or milk may be called grass-fed beef or pasture-raised dairy. But, the term “pasture-raised” can lead to confusion with the term “free range”, which does not describe exactly what the animals eat.
I went on an exchange tour in Malaysia and found out that their cattle are being fed with a type of grass that is distantly related to sugarcane. Although they aren’t as pampered like the cows grown for Kobe beef, they taste quite excellent, too.