Supplementation strategies for dairy cows grazing on tropical grass during the rainy

Abstract

Brazil is the fourth largest milk producer with 15.9% increase in its production in the last five years, showing potential to become the world's largest exporter of milk.However, for it is necessary to produce milk with low cost and high quality. Minas Gerais is the largest milk producer, with 27.3% of national production.Milk production in Brazil is developed mainly in pasture systems, which gives the milk produced, low production cost. However, production of dairy cattle based only on use of tropical pasture systems does not attend the high demand for individual productions or even for medium productions. Studies demonstrate the potential of milk production from intensively managed pastures, allowing increased milk production per area and the association with the use of feed concentrates maximizing milk production per cow. The combination of these twotechniques managements enables increase in milk production significantly.