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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2017
Recent work concluded that when lactating dairy cows are fed a relatively high energy diet (Garnsworthy and Jones, 1987), increasing the dietary undegradable protein (UDP) supply to those which are fat at calving leads to increased mobilisation of body fat reserves; however, increasing the UDP supply to those which are thin at calving results in reduction of voluntary feed intake, but does not affect the change in condition or milk yield. Little difference was found in yields of cows fat at calving receiving a relatively high UDP diet post calving, and cows thin at calving receiving a high or low UDP diet. Similar results were obtained with diets of lower energy and protein content (Jones and Garnsworthy, 1987). The investigation reported here aimed to examine the effect of body condition at calving on the response to energy level in the diet.