This clearly shows why farmers feed large quantities of grain to dairy cattle. It also shows that there is great opportunity to exploit forages more fully. Table 1 . It is used for expressing the chemical energy in feeds and metabolic processes. 3Calculated for a 1430-pound Holstein cow.
Dairymen generally obtain less than half of that amount.
Furthermore, 3.7 tons per acre is not a very high yield by today's standards. Thus, if dairymen were to obtain potential yields and achieve potential utilization efficiency, milk production per unit of land area could be increased several fold. While Hodgson's data are for milk production, liveweight gains by beef cattle follow similar trends in relation to forage quality. These losses are perhaps the most extreme losses in agriculture. Very large quantities of photosynthetically fixed energy are either lost or rendered less available to animals by current harvest and storage systems.