Abstract. Title of the paper: The impact of nutrition and non nutrition factors on milk urea concentration. I. The impact of nutrition factors on milk urea concentration
The object of this study was to determine the impact of dietary crude protein / energy balance, stage of lactation parity, milk yield or milk protein yield, milk protein content, somatic cell count, season and herd on milk ureä concentration under the conditions of large herds (50–1000 dairy cows) and routine milk yield recording. From this data a model was created to predict the milk urea concentration for a single dairy cow or a feeding group For the analysis of the data a mixed linear model (proc mixed; SAS^®, 1997) was used. The fixed effects (ratio of crude protein / energy, degradability of dietary crude protein, ruminal N-balance, lactation period, parity) was computed by generalized least-squares-means. The season, herd and month were used as random effects Milk yield or milk protein yield, milk protein content, somatic cell count and day in milk were included as Covariables in the model. The effect of dietary crude protein / energy balance on milk urea was significant (p < 0.0001). For diets with an optimal ratio of crude protein / energy (according to GfE, 1997) 226 mg/1 was calculated using least-squares-means. For diets with excess of crude protein this figure rose to 252 mg/1 In this study a significant difference in least-squares-means calculated urea concentration did not existed for degradability of dietary crude protein. On the other hand, a significant difference in least-squares-means calculated urea concentration existed for ruminal N-balance between 0 and 2.