The economics of using artificially dried green crops in milk production

From comprehensive experiments in Denmark, it is found that traditional roughage can be substituted by artifically dried grass (cobs) without any technical changes in the milk produced, but with a reduced labour requirement. With respect to maintaining a high feed utilization wafers are preferable to cobs and cobs to pellets.The future of artificially dried crops depends greatly on the ability of the industry to secure a high and uniform quality of these products. If this is achieved, the dried feeds can substitute a great part of the grain mix (concentrates) without any significant reduction of a typical basic ration of roughage for milk cows. Dried crops can be strongly competitive in certain circumstances, depending on its relative to grain mix.As an alternative for traditional conservation methods of grassland crops, artificial drying offers technical advantages, but it is not economically competitive when energy (oil etc.) prices are high. The economic importance of dried green crops can be increased through development of the organization and technique in the drying industry to ensure better plant material, a more efficient drying temperature and more efficient further processing in the plant. An open, but very important question is: what will the price of energy for the drying plant be in the future?