MODULATION OF FEEDING BEHAVIOR IN LACTATING DAIRY COWS BY SWEET SENSORY ADDITIVES

The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in feeding behavior and performance of lactating dairy cows in response to the addition of sensory additives into their TMR. A 90-d experiment was conducted involving 42 lactating cows (15 primiparous, 27 multiparous; BW = 690 ± 63 kg; DIM = 148 ± 73; milk yield = 38 ± 8 kg/d) randomly allocated to 3 treatments and fed a common TMR (15.4% CP, 29.2% NDF, 1.67 Mcal of NEl/kg). Treatments were either no supplementation (CON) or supplementation with sensory additive A (SAA – containing stevia glycosides) or B (SAB – the same formulation without stevia glycosides) at 30 g/d. Dry matter intake (DMI), milk production, milk composition, BW, feeding behavior, and feed efficiency (FE) were determined daily. Data were analyzed with a mixed-effect model that included the fixed effects of treatment, parity, week, and their 2-way interactions. Results are shown in Table 1. Feed intake was reduced (P < 0.001) when both sensory additives were added into the TMR.However, milk yield and composition did not differ among treatments.Regarding feeding behavior, SAB reduced (P < 0.001) the number of meals and eating time, and increased (P < 0.001) meal size compared with SAA and CON. In contrast, SAA reduced meal size (P < 0.001) and eating rate (P < 0.001) compared with SAB and CON. The use of sweet sensory additives may modulate feeding behavior in lactating dairy cows; nevertheless, such a response appears to be dictated by their composition (i.e., sweet ingredients).