Effect of feeding fat to dairy cows receiving a fat-deficient basal diet. I. Milk yield and composition.

The effects of supplementing a basal diet, in which the low level of fatty acids limited milk production, with soya oil, a palm oil/palmitic acid mixture and tallow, on the yield of milk and of its constituents, and on the composition of the milk, are reported. The yields of milk and milk fat were greatly increased by all the oil-supplemented diets; the mean daily yield of solids-not-fat (SNF) was also increased, but supplementation with soya oil caused the yield of crude protein (CP) to decrease, whereas the other fat-rich concentrate mixtures gave the same mean yield of protein as did the low-fat, control diet. All 3 oil-supplemented diets lowered the proportion of CP in the milk, but the SNF content was unchanged by any treatment. Dietary soya oil tended to lower the proportion of fat in the milk, whilst the palm oil/palmitic acid mixture raised it, with the tallow exerting no effect. The results are discussed in relation to previous work in which these dietary oils have been used, but in which the intake of fatty acids from the control diets did not limit milk production to the extent reported here.