Productive and nutritional aspects of forages oats and barley alone and consociated to vetch in high Andean conditions

Forage grasses, such as oats and barley are the most common and cheap source of nutrients for ruminants in the high Andean region. Therefore, information about productivity and chemical composition of these forages are important in the high Andean region. Results indicate that forage oats cultivated at an altitude between 4200 and 4400 meters above sea level produced 30.0 t ha-1 of fresh matter (FM) or 5.0 t ha-1 of dry matter (DM) and 0.7 t ha-1 of crude protein (CP). The crude protein (CP) of oats allows covering the maintenance, pregnancy, or lactation requirements. For the case of barley, the productivity was 35.3 t ha-1 of fresh matter (FM) or 9.4 t ha-1 of dry matter (DM) and 0.8 t ha-1 of crude protein (CP) allowing a milk production of 8 kg cow-1 day-1. Regarding associations, the association of oat variety Tayko and vetch in a ratio of 75:25 performed better than other associations, resulting in a production of 58.5 t ha-1 of FM or 16.3 t ha-1 of DM and 0.76 t ha-1 of CP. The association of oat variety Mantaro 15 and vetch in a ratio of 50:50 (7.43% CP) enables milk production of 5.5 kg cow-1 day-1. Forage oats and barley are good sources of energy for ruminants due to the neutral detergent fiber concentration (46.70 and 51.76% respectively).