Relationships among manure nitrogen output and dietary and animal factors in lactating dairy cows

A large data set derived from total diet digestibility assessments on lactating dairy cows (535 Holstein-Friesian and 29 Norwegian) was used to examine effects of dietary and animal factors on manure (feces and urine) nitrogen (N) output and to develop mitigation strategies and prediction equations for manure N output in lactating dairy cows. Manure N output was positively and significantly related to live weight, milk yield, dietary crude protein (CP) concentration, dry matter intake, and N intake. Reducing the dietary CP concentration or increasing the milk yield decreased manure N output per kilogram of milk yield. Prediction equations for manure N output using live weight and milk yield, either alone or combined, had relatively low R² (0.227 to 0.474) and large standard error (70.6 to 85.6) values. Addition of dietary CP concentration to these relationships considerably increased R² to 0.754 and reduced the standard error to 48.2. Relating manure N output to N intake produced a very high r² (0.901) and a very low standard error (30.6). The addition of live weight and milk yield to this relationship as supporting predictors only marginally increased R² to 0.910 and reduced the standard error to 29.3. The internal validation of these equations revealed that use of N intake as the primary predictor produced a very accurate prediction of manure N output. In situations in which data on N intake are not available, prediction equations based on dietary CP concentration, live weight, and milk yield together can produce a relatively accurate assessment of manure N output.