The Influence of Dietary Characteristics on the Milk Quantity and Quality of Riverine Buffaloes: Estimate of the Energy/Protein Requirements, For a Medium-High Production, In the First Ninety Days of Lactation (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION The buffalo species is bred on all continents, in a variety of geographical, environmental and agronomic contexts with different methods and aims; this has led to marked differences in the diets adopted. In Western Europe its diet is based on forages, silage, byproducts and concentrates (Bartocci et al., 2002a). In order to estimate the requirements of the lactating buffalo, also verifying the effect of the diets used on the milk quality (Tripaldi, 1994), diets with medium-low energy/protein levels were used (Verna et al., 1993a; Verna et al., 1993b; Verna et al., 1994) taking into consideration also the protein level suggested by Rai and Aggarwal (1991). The results obtained, confirmed also by Bertoni and Piccioli Cappelli (1994), showed that the different energy-protein levels used did not significantly increase milk production. In Italy the supply of buffalo milk, used exclusively for cheese production, has always been lower than the demand, this has led to an expansion of this species, also substituting the bovine species, with an improvement in the technologies used and has contributed to the opinion that the improvement of milk production could be achieved by increasing energy and crude protein intake (Sarrubi et al., 2000). Bartocci et al. (2006), administering a high energy-protein level, attained a significant effect on milk production without the animals displaying negative metabolic or physiologic symptoms. In a subsequent work (Bartocci and Terramoccia, 2010), maintaining constant the energy level of the two diets of the earlier work, but increasing the protein level, obtained positive production results and showed that each of the two diets studied could be used advantageously in two different lactation periods. As a consequence of these results, the need arose to define energy/protein requirements for medium-high production in the first ninety days of lactation. Further research was undertaken on twenty farms in order to verify the effects of the diets used on the chemical and technological characteristics of the milk produced (Bartocci et al., 2002a; Tripaldi et al., 2002; Tripaldi et al., 2003). Some Authors (Zicarelli, 2000; Bartocci et al., 2002a; Bartocci et al., 2002b) have provided indications with regard to the requirements of the lactating buffalo, but exclusively with regard to production and unrelated to the stage of lactation, but the administration of diets rich in starch and fermentable carbohydrates, at an inappropriate stage of lactation, facilitates excessive fattening and due to an increase in insulin, leads to a reduction in the lactation period (Bartocci et al., 2002b).