Maize silage supplementation in grazing dairy cows: milk production, pasture intake, behaviour and methane emissions

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This dataset includes raw and analysed data from 2 grazing experiments on dairy cows carried out at the INRAE PEGASE experimental dairy farm of Méjusseaume (Le Rheu, France, https://doi.org/10.15454/yk9q-pf68), in spring 2021 and 2022. These experiments were part of the GrASTech project, in the 2018 Joint Call of the Cofund ERA-Nets FACCE ERA-GAS (Grant N° 696356), ICT-AGRI 2 (Grant N° 618123) and SusAn (Grant N° 696231). The first experiment aimed to study the effect of partial mixed ration (PMR) supplementation level (0, 4 and 8 kg DM/d), based on maize silage and soyabean meal (85:15 ratio on a DM basis), cows being at pasture day and night (access time to pasture of 19 h/d). The second experiment aimed to study the effect of the moment of maize silage supplementation (5 kg DM/d; morning vs. evening milking) when cows grazed either only during daytime or during day and night (access time to pasture of 7 vs. 19 h/d). Twenty-four lactating Holstein dairy cows were used in each experiment, according to a 3 × 3 (Experiment 1) or a 4 × 4 (Experiment 2) Latin square design. Milk production and composition, pasture intake (n-alkanes method), grazing behaviour (Lifecorder and Feed’Live devices), and methane emissions (Laser Methane Detector) were measured individually at each period. The dataset is composed of 18 Microsoft® Excel files, corresponding to different types and levels of information: dates of experimental periods, treatments description, cow characteristics, cow measurements, herbage measurements, feed characteristics, weather, methane emissions, daily pattern of feeding behaviour.