Senescence, removal, transport of nutrients and nutritional value in tropical grasses

Abstract

Although Brazil holds one of the largest commercial cattle herd in the world, about 209 million head (IBGE, 2011), it is observed that the average stocking rate is very low, resulting in lower potential productivity of the livestock sector. Among the various factors that contribute to this low productivity, can highlight the seasonality in food supply as an aggravating factor for the productive sector. Basically, in all regions of Brazil, seasonality is characterized by variations in the availability and quality of forage in response to changes in climatic conditions which do not allow forage plants have uniform growth throughout the year. The choice of forage grass to form a pasture, must be very careful to increase their productivity of dry matter and crude protein content, with seasonal balance and acceptability by animals. The pasture management aims to achieve balance between the performance / quality of forage produced, maintaining the desired botanical composition. Associated with these factors has been able to obtain good results by field of animal production. To obtain proper pasture management, it is necessary to know beyond the physical, structural and anatomical characteristics of forage species, the amount of forage offered to animals and nutritive value, but also the amount of forage being consumed by the animal and nutritional value the forage actually consumed.