Previous work conducted with whole crop wheat (WCW) as a forage for dairy cattle has focussed on harvesting the crop at a relatively mature stage and the addition of urea to act as a preservative (e.g. Cammell et al., 1996). Fermented WCW has the potential of being an important complementary forage to grass silage for dairy cows but avoids the addition of large quantities of nitrogen to the crop at ensiling required for urea treatment. However, little work has been conducted to evaluate the effects of stage of maturity of whole crop wheat on subsequent animal performance. The objectives of the current experiment were to examine the effects of stage of maturity of fermented WCW on milk production, liveweight and blood metabolite concentrations of dairy cows.

The winter wheat variety Hunter was grown as a conventional cereal crop and cut at two stages of maturity. The first cut (low starch) was when the crop was approximately 300g/kg dry matter (DM) and Zadoks growth stage 71 (watery ripe) and the second (high starch) at approximately 370g/kg DM and growth stage 85 (soft dough).