This study was conducted to estimate the risk of timothy damage by drought occurrence in the Tempoku region. Available water at the surface was calculated from 1 May to 20 August based on soil physical properties and precipitation. “Drought days,” the number of days for which the available water at the soil surface was zero, from June 21 (the day after first cutting) through August 20 (the day of the second cutting), were counted each year during 2000-2009. During those 61 days for each of 10 years, the “drought risk” was calculated: the probability of 20 or more drought days. The drought days and drought risks were mapped using GIS software. Results show that both drought days and drought risks were different among plots in the Tempoku region, and even between neighboring plots. Especially when the soils were quite mutually different, large differences were found for drought days and drought risks. The estimated drought days can predict the timothy yield of the second cut at the Tempoku sub-station. This risk map can be adapted to actual farmers’ fields in the Tempoku region.

Feeding trials were conducted in a Youden square design with four maintenance breeding Japanese black cows. Four diet treatments and three trial periods were used to examine the effects of inclusion levels of ground felled bamboo (GFB) (Phyllostachys pubescens) in the diet on intake, chewing time, rumen fermentation and blood compositions. The treatments were conducted in 0％, 13％, 18％ and 24％ inclusions of GFB in the basal diet that consisted of 84％ tall fescue hay and 16％ concentrates on a dry matter basis. Intake had a tendency to be increased by an increased inclusion level of GFB, and the cows in all treatments could consume enough total digestible nutrients to meet the energy requirement for maintenance. The chewing time in 18％ and 24％ GFB treatments were significantly lower than that of the 0％ treatment (P<0.05), but they were higher than 30 minutes per 1kg dry matter intake, which is the shortest chewing time to maintain rumen function. The parameters in the rumen fluid and the blood were not significantly different among the treatments. These results suggested that 24％ of dry matter in the diet could be replaced with GFB without adverse effects on the nutritional status in maintenance breeding Japanese black cows.

Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) was used to predict chemical composition of Brachiariagrass (192 samples from eight genotypes). 192 samples were divided two groups, one group (n＝128) was selected for calibration development, and the remaining group (n＝64) was used for equation validation. The accuracy of calibration from partial least square regression (PLSR) and multiple linear regression (MLR) was evaluated by the correlation coefficients (r) and the standard deviation of prediction (SDP). Furthermore, the accuracy of prediction was evaluated by the evaluation index (EI). The ‘r’ and SDP of moisture, crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), neutral detergent fiber (NDFom), acid detergent fiber (ADFom), acid detergent lignin (ADL) and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) from PLSR method were 0.91-0.99 and 0.25-2.38 respectively. “EI” of moisture and CP exhibited “A rank”, however the other chemical compounds were “B rank”. These results indicated that moisture, CP, CF, NDFom, ADFom, ADL and IVDMD contents in Brachiariagrass can be predicted by using NIRS techniques with an acceptable accuracy.