A2B4jHfettiar Farming, Saturday, March 28, 1998
Cows And ‘Eggs’ Open Gates Of Research At Beltsville ARS
ANDY ANDREWS
Lancaster Fanning Staff
BELTSVILLE, Md. Like
many cows here at the 7.000-acre
USDA Agricultural Research Ser
vice (ARS) dairy research prog
ram, a cow like number 9654 may
have to wear what scientists affec
tionately call “the egg.”
Simply put, the egg is a low
frequency radio transmitter worn
around the cow’s neck that is syn
chronized with a locking mechan
ism on a head gate. The egg allows
only that particular gate to open
and close. ,
The scientists here aren’t testing
cow feeding behavior at least
not yet. The egg is one way to exa
mine, however, how a cow reaches
for feed and why it would prefer
one gate locking area to another.
By the way cow 9654, a
Holstein, milks 140 pounds a day
and is the herd’s high producer,
according to Duane Taylor,
herdsman/supervisor at the USDA
research farm in Beltsville.
Members of the Solanco Young
Farmers touted the dairy Tuesday
this week to learn more about agri
cultural research under way at the
ARS site, home to more than 400
buildings and research into envir
onmental conservation, human
nutrition, experiments in plant and
animal genetics, and other applied
research.
According to Taylor, there are
135 cows on test from a herd that is
half grade and half registered
Holstein, with about the same
number of replacements. On Provo
DHIA, milk h< rd average is 22,000
pounds.
The dairy, which markets its
milk to Land O’Lakes through a
cooperative agreement with the
University of Maryland, makes
use of a single-mix TMR consist
ing of corn silage, alfalfa silage,
otchardgrass, cottonseed, alfalfa
hay, and concentrate with bypass
protein. Cows average 70 pounds
of milk per day.
Beltsvllle Agricultural Research Center (or BARC) is the
home of the National Agricultural Library, housed In a
15-story building. The library contains a 2-mllllon-volume
collection of printed materials on agriculture and related
sciences. Anybody with access to the Internet can make a
request for Information to the library about any agricultural
subject and receive a response via email.
The cows are housed in two
curtain-sided structures, first
designed in 1979 and completed in
1993. One structure is insulated
and another noninsulated. The
cows are situated on mattresses
with a polypropylene cloth cover
that uses ground rubber material as
padding. The mattresses are cov
ered with sawdust
There are 10 employees work
ing two shifts. Milking is at 6 a.m.
and 6 p.m.
An interesting area is how feed
is testing on the animals.
There are seventy tubes that can
hold from 65-70 kilograms (about
120-130 pounds) of feed material.
In studies, cows are fed either
orchardgrass or alfalfa, or any
combination of feeds. With the
new electronic feed systems, feed
will be matched to individual cow
requirements.
An interesting note, according
to Taylor, is that orchardgrass is
less expensive than alfalfa to grow.
The dairy’s orchardgrass tested 22
percent for crude protein on a dry
matter basis.
An alley scraper at the ends of
the cement-floor frcestall unit
pushes the manure to a holding
area at the end of the bam, where it
flows to a main receptor pit From
there, a separator takes the liquids
out, which go to a biogas digester.
Interestingly, none of the
methane from the digester is stored
or converted to energy. It is simply
allowed to dissipate. The solids are
sent to a windrow composting
operation nearby.
The dairy is just one of the
research areas seen by the tour
group Tuesday. The site also is
home to beef cattle, including
Herefords, Angus, and Charolais
as part of on-site test programs.
The BeltsviUe ARS site has an
annual budget of $229 million.
In addition, some of the other
areas of research at BeltsviUe
(Turn to Pago A3O)
The Beltsville dairy farm Is home to about 135 cows on test.
Turfgrass studies, along with alfalfa and soybean researcl
the tour group examines the flats in the greenhouses.
The Beitsvllle ARS dairy barn Is home to about 135 registered and grade Holstein.
The cows are comfortable on rubber mattresses and sawdust bedding.
Greenhouses at the Beltsville ARS.
lere,
ler way.
i, are un<