Milk performance per area of pasture- or silage-fed organic dairy cows in mountainous regions of Austria

Summary The core aim of sustainable dairy milk production is an efficient and cheap conversion of forage to milk. In pasture based dairy production systems, a high level of milk production per hectare is a mayor goal. In the project presented, three milk production systems barn feeding with grass silage  group S-KF0, barn feeding with grass silage plus concentrate supplementation  group S-KF+ and pasture feeding on a continuous grazing system without supplementation  group VW were compared, including 63 cows over three vegetationperiods in the mountain area of Austria. The average lactation day at thebeginning of the feeding experiment was 46 days (± 11.9).The permanent grassland wasdivided into three equal arears. One third of...