Netherlands: Potential sorghum as a forage crop for dairy farming

Despite its historical use as a forage crop for livestock, sorghum remained relatively unknown in western livestock farming for a long time. Thanks to work by breeders on varieties for more northern regions and research conducted within the PPS, new insights have come to light that demonstrate the potential of sorghum as a nutritional source for ruminants. In terms of cultivation, key benefits of sorghum include its resilience to drought and insect pests, which are increasingly challenging other forage crops such as silage maize. Research into feed aspects for dairy cattle shows that sorghum silage can be an excellent addition to the dairy cattle ration in terms of digestibility and nutritional value. Sorghum silage has a beneficial effect on feed intake and can therefore be used to further improve the palatability of the ration. However, milk production did not increase proportionally to feed intake in this study, which may be related to a slightly lower overall digestibility, ...