Feeding corn silage to buffalo in Pakistan

Buffalo are not small cows

The differences are not cosmetic. The most useful direct comparison comes from an Italian trial that ran Mediterranean buffalo bulls and Holstein Friesian bulls side by side on four identical diets, ranging from 87.5% forage down to 50% forage. The forage in every diet was alfalfa hay and maize silage mixed 65:35 on a dry matter basis, so the maize silage figures below are measured on maize silage specifically, not inferred.

Source: Bartocci, Terramoccia and Puppo, in FAO Buffalo Production and Research (2005), Chapter VIII.

Note the body weights in that trial: the buffalo averaged 417 kg, the Friesians 509 kg. The buffalo carried a larger rumen on a body 90 kg lighter.

What this actually means on your farm

Buffalo hold feed longer and ferment it harder. Seven extra hours in the rumen, in a bigger vessel, with roughly seven times the bacterial count. That is why buffalo cope with bulky, fibrous, low-quality roughage that would fail a crossbred cow — and it is the physiological reason Pakistani buffalo survive on wheat straw in a way that would break a Holstein.

Buffalo extract more out of maize silage in the rumen than cattle do. Both the protein and the carbohydrate fractions of maize silage were degraded roughly 9-10 percentage points more completely in the buffalo rumen. Maize silage suits this animal.

But whole-gut fibre digestion is not automatically better. In this trial cattle actually came out ahead on total-tract organic matter and NDF digestibility, because cattle hold material longer after the rumen. The published literature is genuinely split on this — some studies find higher NDF digestibility in cattle, others in buffalo. Do not repeat the common claim that "buffalo digest fibre better" as though it were settled. What is well supported is that buffalo do more of their digestion in the rumen and less behind it.

Buffalo use protein more efficiently on high-forage diets. On the 87.5% forage diet, protein digestibility was higher in buffalo (66.2% vs 63.2%). A separate study at 77:23 forage:concentrate found the same gap, wider (76.5% vs 70.3%). Buffalo also recycle blood urea to the rumen more effectively than cattle. The practical upshot: buffalo reward a forage-first ration. One of the standard Italian buffalo feeding references states it plainly — buffalo utilise forage much better than they utilise concentrate.

Dry matter intake: buffalo eat less per kilo of body weight

This is the number most farmers get wrong when they copy a cow ration.

Published requirements for lactating Mediterranean buffalo at 650 kg live weight:

Source: FAO Buffalo Production and Research (2005), Chapter VII, Tables 9 and 10.

So a lactating buffalo sits at roughly 2.0-2.6% of live weight in dry matter. High-producing temperate dairy cows are commonly fed at 3.5-4.0% of body weight; a moderate-yielding crossbred cow in Pakistan will typically sit somewhere around 2.8-3.2%. Buffalo sit below both.

Two honest caveats. First, intake percentage is driven heavily by milk yield, so part of that gap is production level rather than species. Second, these figures are from Italian Mediterranean buffalo. FAO lists adult Nili-Ravi and Kundi females at around 600 kg live weight, with Nili-Ravi at roughly 2,000 kg over a 305-day lactation at 6.5% fat and Kundi at roughly 2,000 kg over 320 days at 7.0% fat. Comparable published Pakistani intake standards for silage-based buffalo rations are thin. Treat 2.0-2.6% of live weight as a planning figure, then verify it on your own animals by weighing what goes into the manger and what comes back out.

Two more published observations worth planning around:

• For every extra kilo of milk, requirements rise by about 0.475 kg of dry matter intake. Intake does not keep up with yield in early lactation.
• In roughly the first 50 days after calving, buffalo eat less than their requirement and lose condition. After about 150 days they eat more than their requirement and put condition back on. If you do not drop ration energy density in late lactation, buffalo get fat. They do not develop fat cow syndrome the way bovines do, but excess energy does shift milk composition, particularly fat.

The fodder gap: the real economic argument in Pakistan

Everything above is biology. This is the money.

Pakistan has two periods of severe fodder scarcity each year: May-June and October-November. That finding comes from Syed Hassan Raza of the Department of Livestock Management, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, published in FAO's Silage Making in the Tropics (2000).

The cropping calendar explains it. Rabi fodders — berseem, lucerne, oats — carry the herd from December through April and are finished by May. Kharif fodders — maize, sorghum, millet — are not in useful supply until late June or July. That is gap one. Kharif fodders finish around September-October, and berseem is not ready to cut until December. That is gap two.

During both gaps the standard response is more wheat straw (toori) and more concentrate. Wheat straw is a filler: very high in fibre, very low in energy and protein. Milk drops, condition drops, and the concentrate bill rises to partly compensate. Two windows a year, roughly 60 days each.

Silage exists to close those windows. You conserve surplus forage when it is abundant and cheap, and feed it when green fodder is scarce and expensive.

Raza's paper is also worth reading honestly on why silage historically failed in Pakistan. He identified small holdings of 3-5 acres, herds of one or two animals, high production cost and a poor cost-benefit ratio at that scale. Awareness was not the problem — around 90% of farmers near government institutions knew about silage, but only about 20% of them were willing to make it themselves. Note that this is stated willingness, not measured adoption. His recommended solution was large-scale commercial production to bring per-unit cost down. That paper was written in 2000, and commercial silage supply in Pakistan has changed a great deal since. But the underlying arithmetic he identified still holds: silage makes sense when someone else carries the machinery, land and fermentation risk.

your current delivered price per tonne or per bale, or a line pointing readers to WhatsApp for current pricing

a like-for-like cost comparison per kg of dry matter — silage vs green fodder vs wheat straw plus concentrate — using your own delivered prices and current market fodder rates

What maize silage is, and what it is not

Typical general composition of well-made maize silage, by dry matter band:

Source: Feedipedia (INRAE/CIRAD/AFZ/FAO) maize silage datasheet. At 30-35% DM, metabolisable energy is around 10.8 MJ/kg DM and organic matter digestibility around 71.7%.

Penn State Extension's targets for corn silage quality are 32-38% DM, 30-40% starch, 30-45% NDF, over 55% 30-hour NDF digestibility, and 6.5-8.5% crude protein. The general optimum for ensiling is 30-35% DM, with 25-40% acceptable; harvest is normally timed by the kernel milk line sitting between one-third and two-thirds down the grain.

Read the protein line again. Maize silage runs around 7% crude protein on a dry matter basis. Published guidance puts a lactating buffalo's ration requirement at 12.5-14.5% crude protein, with one Italian consortium recommending 15.9% for a group producing 12 kg/day. Even a dry buffalo needs somewhere between roughly 7.9% and 11% crude protein of dry matter, depending on which published standard you follow — FAO's buffalo nutrition chapter reproduces dry-herd figures of 7.90% (Bartocci et al., 2002), 10.5% (Proto, 1993) and 10-11% (Bertoni et al., 1994). Say which standard you are working to, because the spread is wide.

Maize silage is an energy and forage feed. It is not a protein feed. Anyone who tells you silage replaces your concentrate is selling something. Silage displaces green fodder and wheat straw. Protein still has to come from cottonseed cake, oilseed meals, guar, berseem or lucerne.

your measured dry matter % range from independent lab analysis your measured crude protein % of DM your measured starch % of DM your measured pH range whether a lab analysis sheet is supplied with each consignment

Practical daily feeding rates

Work in dry matter, then convert. The conversion matters more than most farmers realise: 20 kg of 30% DM silage is 6.0 kg of dry matter, while 20 kg of 25% DM silage is 5.0 kg. Same weight in the manger, 17% less feed.

The table below assumes silage at 30% DM. If yours differs, divide the dry matter figure by your actual DM percentage.

Note on dry and late-gestation animals. The Italian buffalo mozzarella consortium's protocol specifically recommends maize silage for the dry period at no more than 5-7 kg per head per day, alongside oat hay and wheat straw. The reason is mineral balance, not toxicity: those feeds are deliberately chosen because they are low in minerals, so the calcium:phosphorus ratio can be pulled to 1:1.1 from the ninth month of gestation. High calcium in late gestation is associated with vaginal and uterine prolapse. This is a specific-purpose recommendation from an intensive Italian system, but the prolapse risk is real in Pakistani buffalo too, and the cap is cheap insurance.

The starch ceiling nobody mentions

Published buffalo guidance states that starch plus sugar in the ration should not exceed 16-17% of dry matter, and that after 150 days of lactation starch should not exceed 18% of DM. That is considerably tighter than a typical dairy cow ration.

Now do the arithmetic. Maize silage runs 29-32% starch on a DM basis. If silage supplies 50% of ration dry matter, silage alone contributes roughly 15-16% starch to the ration. You are at the ceiling before a single kilo of wanda goes in.

Add 3 kg of a concentrate running 40% starch to a 13 kg DM ration and you add another 9 percentage points, putting the ration around 24-25% starch. That is well above the published buffalo guidance and into acidosis territory — loose dung, drop in cud chewing, drop in milk fat, sore feet three months later.

The correct move when you add silage is to take concentrate out, not to layer silage on top of an unchanged ration. Keep the straw in the ration for effective fibre. This is the single most common and most expensive error we see described.

That said, buffalo clearly tolerate a high-silage ration when the rest is balanced. Buffalo heifers reared on maize silage diets gained 600-800 g/day and reached puberty at 400-420 kg. The animal is not the constraint. The ration balance is.

Fitting silage alongside what you already feed

A workable structure for a lactating buffalo in a fodder-gap month:

• Silage — 35-50% of ration dry matter. Energy and forage.
• Green fodder — whatever is available. Fresh protein and vitamin A, and it helps intake.
• Wheat straw (toori) — reduced but not eliminated. Effective fibre and rumen scratch factor. Silage chopped to 8-15 mm does not fully substitute for straw's physical structure.
• Concentrate — reduced from your pre-silage rate, and reformulated toward protein rather than energy. This is where the crude protein has to come from.
• Mineral mixture and salt — see below. Not optional.

Weigh the first week's rations. Estimating by basket or by armful is where rations go wrong.

Introducing silage to animals that have never seen it

The rumen is a living culture. Changing its substrate changes which organisms dominate, and that takes time. FAO's buffalo nutrition chapter is explicit that sudden dietary change is not matched by the rumen, because expansion of the amylolytic bacterial population and development of the rumen papillae happen at a slower rate — which is why it recommends moving dry buffalo onto the lactation diet at least three weeks before expected calving. Standard ruminant digestion trials, including the buffalo-versus-cattle work cited above, allow 14 days of feeding adaptation before they will accept a measurement as valid.

Take three weeks. Not three days.

Practical points for the first week:

• Feed silage when animals are hungry, at the start of the meal, not on top of a full manger.
• Mix it into familiar green fodder rather than offering it alone. Layering it under chopped berseem or maize fodder works.
• A handful of concentrate or a little molasses sprinkled over the silage gets reluctant animals started. Withdraw it once they are eating.
• Expect 2-4 days of refusal from some animals. This is normal and not a sign the silage is bad. Buffalo are conservative eaters.
• Clear refusals every day. In a Punjab summer, silage left in the manger from morning is sour and hot by afternoon and will teach the animal to refuse it.
• Feed twice daily in hot weather, in smaller amounts, rather than one large morning feed.
• Do not start the transition in the same week you change anything else — no new concentrate, no change in milking routine, no moving animals between sheds.

If a whole group refuses silage that other groups eat readily, stop and inspect the feed rather than pushing harder. Animals refuse spoiled silage for good reason.

Planning quantities for the gap

The arithmetic is simple. For a 60-day fodder gap:

Tonnes required = (head × kg silage per head per day × days) ÷ 1,000, plus 10% for wastage

Twenty lactating buffalo at 19 kg per head per day for 60 days is 22,800 kg, or roughly 23 tonnes. Add 10% and order 25 tonnes. In local units that is about 625 maunds (1 maund = 40 kg; 1 tonne = 25 maunds).

Order ahead of the gap, not into it. Prices in May and October are set by scarcity.

your minimum order quantity your bale weight range and number of bales per tonne your delivery areas and typical lead time from order to delivery your recommended maximum storage period from date of baling, and storage instructions

Water

Two things change when silage enters the ration, and farmers routinely misread both.

Trough intake will fall, and that is arithmetic, not a problem. Silage at 30% DM is 70% water. A buffalo eating 20 kg of silage as fed takes in 14 litres of water through the manger. Replacing dry wheat straw with silage shifts water from the trough to the feed. Total water requirement has not changed.

Total requirement rises steeply with heat, and Punjab in May and June is exactly when you are feeding silage. Water intake in ruminants scales with dry matter intake and milk yield, and climbs sharply with ambient temperature. Free-choice clean water, in shade, at all times, is not negotiable.

Cooling is worth money in its own right. In Murrah buffalo, improved management with water splashing during the hot period shortened age at first oestrus from 36.5 months to 33.1 months, and lowered the body weight at which it happened. FAO's buffalo reproduction chapter also lists hot weather without any possibility of bathing or shelter as a cause of prolonged anoestrus. Buffalo tolerate heat poorly. If you are investing in better feed, do not lose the return to a shed with no shade and one dry trough.

Minerals

Maize silage is deliberately described in buffalo feeding protocols as poor in minerals — that is precisely why it is recommended for the dry period. The corollary is unavoidable: a silage-heavy lactating ration must carry a mineral mixture.

Published buffalo figures worth knowing:

• Each kg of buffalo milk contains roughly 1.8-2.0 g calcium and 1.1-1.2 g phosphorus — higher than cow milk per litre.
• Production requirements work out to about 5.2-5.8 g calcium and 2.1-2.3 g phosphorus per kg of milk. One earlier reference gives 6.7 g calcium, 2.2 g phosphorus and 0.9 g magnesium per kg.
• Calcium:phosphorus ratio should be about 2:1 during lactation.
• From the ninth month of gestation the ratio should shift to 1:1.1 to reduce prolapse risk. This means cutting high-calcium forages such as lucerne and berseem hay in late gestation, and favouring oat hay, wheat straw and a limited allowance of maize silage.

Salt should be available separately. Feed a mineral mixture formulated for lactating dairy animals, and take local advice on it — soil mineral status in Pakistan varies enormously between districts, and a blanket recommendation is worth less than a district-specific one.

The mistakes that cost money

1. Feeding spoiled or mouldy silage

The most serious error, and the most common. The moulds that colonise maize silage are well documented: Fusarium species producing vomitoxin (DON), fumonisin, zearalenone and T-2; Aspergillus producing aflatoxins; and Penicillium species. Aflatoxin in feed carries through into milk. Zearalenone is a reproductive toxin.

The rule is simple. Visibly mouldy silage is not fed. Not to dry animals, not to bullocks, and above all not to pregnant animals. It is not "mixed in to dilute it". It is thrown away. The value of one buffalo pregnancy exceeds the value of a great deal of silage.

Well-fermented silage smells sweet and slightly acidic and is uniform in colour. Silage that smells of rot, butter, ammonia or manure has fermented badly. On the numbers, the published fermentation benchmarks for maize silage are tight: butyric acid above about 2.5 g/kg DM (0.25% of DM) indicates a fermentation problem, and above 5 g/kg DM (0.5% of DM) indicates clostridial fermentation. Well-made maize silage sits at pH 3.7-4.2, with a commercial goal below 3.9. A maize silage sitting at pH 5.0 has failed, not passed.

2. Poor face and bale management

Once air reaches silage, yeasts and moulds restart and dry matter losses of 1.5-4.5% per day occur in the affected zone. Feeding value goes with it, and the loss is not confined to the visible spoiled layer — heating and mould also depress how readily animals clean up what is put in front of them.

For a clamp or bunker, the general recommendation is to remove 20-30 cm from the face every day, keeping the face tight and even. For wrapped bales the equivalent discipline is:

• Open only what you will feed within 24-48 hours. An opened bale in June heat is on a clock.
• Inspect wrap for punctures before storage and weekly after. Crows, rats, dogs and stray goats all puncture film. FAO's ensiling guidance names animal damage to wrapping as a common cause of failure.
• Tape punctures immediately with proper silage repair tape.
• Stack on a level, drained, clean surface, away from standing water and away from where animals can reach.

your film specification — number of layers and micron thickness — and your recommended stacking height and orientation

3. Sudden ration changes

Covered above, but it bears repeating because it is the second most expensive mistake after mould. Going from a straw-based ration to a half-silage ration inside a week produces acidosis, scouring, a milk fat crash and refusals. Three weeks. Weigh it.

4. Treating silage as a complete feed

It is not. At around 7% crude protein it does not meet a dry buffalo's requirement, let alone a lactating one. Reformulate the concentrate toward protein when silage comes in.

5. Ignoring dry matter when buying and feeding

Silage is bought and fed by weight but works by dry matter. Without a DM figure you do not know what you are buying or feeding. Ask for the analysis.

6. Dirty mangers

Silage is acidic and wet. Residue ferments fast in Pakistani summer temperatures and sours the next feed. Scrape mangers out daily.

Where the Pakistani evidence is thin — read this part

We have cited the best available published work, but you should know its limits.

The detailed intake, energy, protein and mineral requirement figures in this article come from Italian Mediterranean buffalo in intensive systems, largely developed for the Campania mozzarella industry. Nili-Ravi and Kundi are different breeds, at different production levels, under different climate and management. Published feeding standards for silage-based rations in Pakistani buffalo specifically are limited.

What transfers well: the digestive physiology (rumen volume, retention time, microbial load, degradability of maize silage), the direction of the intake relationship, the transition principle, and the mineral and prolapse guidance. What should be treated as a starting point and verified locally: exact intake percentages, exact crude protein targets, and the starch ceiling.

Take local advice. The Livestock and Dairy Development Department in your province, and the veterinary and animal nutrition faculties at institutions such as the University of Agriculture Faisalabad and UVAS Lahore, are the right people to check a ration against. If you are running more than a handful of animals, a ration formulated by someone who has seen your animals, your feeds and your analysis sheets is worth what it costs.

Talk to us

If you are working out how silage fits your herd, what to order for a 60-day gap, or how to move buffalo onto it without losing milk, message us on WhatsApp at +92 310 4603311 or email [email protected]. Tell us your herd size, roughly what your animals weigh, current average yield and what you are feeding now, and we can work through the numbers with you.

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Sources

• FAO, Buffalo Production and Research, REU Technical Series 67, A. Borghese (ed.), 2005 — particularly Chapter VII (Nutritional requirements in buffalo cows and heifers), Chapter VIII (Digestive physiology of the Mediterranean buffalo), and the breed descriptions for Nili-Ravi and Kundi.
• Bartocci, S., Amici, A., Verna, M., Terramoccia, S. and Martillotti, F. (1997), passage rate work published in Livestock Production Science, as reported in the above.
• Raza, S.H., Department of Livestock Management, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, "Basic reasons for failure of silage production in Pakistan", in FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper 161, Silage Making in the Tropics with Particular Emphasis on Smallholders, 2000.
• FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper 161, Paper 2.0 (Silage fermentation processes and their manipulation) and Paper 8.0 (Harvesting and ensiling techniques), 2000.
• Feedipedia (INRAE, CIRAD, AFZ and FAO), maize silage datasheet.
• Penn State Extension, "Key Forage Quality Metrics for Corn Silage".
• Kung, L. and Shaver, R., "Interpretation and Use of Silage Fermentation Analysis Reports", University of Wisconsin-Extension Focus on Forage — for the maize silage pH and volatile fatty acid benchmarks.