Variabilidad a nivel de potrero en producción y calidad del forraje

Most dairy farms in Uruguay have forage as the main component of the diet. Achieving high grass consumption is their challenge to achieve sustainable profitability. For this, it is important to consider and quantify the existing spatial variability in production and quality of pastures to manage them efficiently, this being the main objective of this work. The experimental area comprised six paddocks zoned by electrical conductivity, resulting in 12 zones classified as low, medium, and high. All the paddocks presented a mixture of alfalfa and second year dactylis. The C-DAX pasture meter was used to determine the forage biomass in each grazing area during the spring-summer period and, in turn, botanical and chemical composition was determined for each grazing area using the hand-plucking method. Differences were found in the productive and quality variables between the different areas delimited by electrical conductivity. The areas with higher conductivity offered more and higher quality forage, mainly due to a greater presence of alfalfa.