Evaluation of a natural pastureland agroecosystem for milk production with buffalo cows on saline soils

Irán Reyes Hernández

ABSTRACT
A natural pastureland agroecosystem was evaluated at the “Pastoreo Cero” dairy farm of the Livestock Production Enterprise MACUN, Villa Clara, and its influence on the reproductive and productive performance of Buffalypso and crossbred buffalo cows was determined under saline soil conditions. The evaluated reproductive indicators comprised the distribution of parturitions throughout the year and per season, birth rate and inter-partum and service period; while for the evaluation of the productive performance the total production per lactation, genotype and season was determined. With the primary information obtained a database was elaborated in Microsoft Office Excel, which was processed with the Multiplicative Model. The floristic composition of the pastureland behaved similarly for the rainy (RS) as well as for the dry season (DS), with predominance of Dichanthium annulatum and Bothriochloa pertusa, which are low-quality natural pastures. The pastures represented 54,01 and 50,85 % for the RS and Ds, respectively. The non-palatable plants were represented in higher proportion by Cyperus arternifolius and Mimosa pigra. The studied buffalo herd, independently from the genotype, showed a similar performance to the reports in the specialized literature, with means of 3,6 ± 0,14 and 3,2 ± 0,26 L of milk day-1, and 385 ± 6,60 and 389 ± 12,65 days of parturition-parturition interval for Buffalypso and crossbred cows, respectively. The duration of lactation averaged 169 ± 8,38 and 183 ± 16,06 days for the respective genotypes, being lower in both cases than the mean of 240 days reported in the reviewed bibliography. No substantial differences were found in the botanical composition of the pastureland between both seasons, with predominance of natural pastures for both seasons, in an equitable proportion to those non-pasture species. Milk production as well as parturition occurrence showed a marked seasonality, being higher in the rainy season and at the end of it, respectively. It is concluded that although not all the variation sources were controlled, the bioproductive performance of the two studied genotypes did not show remarkable arithmetic differences, for which for similar exploitation conditions both can be used indistinctly.