ABSTRACTWhole crops of barley were conserved and fed to sheep and cattle. In the first experiment the barley was cut at the mealy‐ripe stage of growth and conserved by ensilage or by drying artificially. Cattle and sheep lost weight when the resulting silages were fedad lib.;wilting the crop before ensiling did not improve the performance. Sheep fed artificially‐dried whole‐crop barley increased in liveweight; and the intake of this was significantly higher than that of the silages.In the second experiment, barley was cut and ensiled at the watery‐ripe, mealy‐ripe and late mealy‐ripe stages of growth. Intakes and levels of performance by sheep fed these silages did not differ with the growth stage at which the crop was harvested, but supplementation of the silages with lucerne pellets resulted in large improvements in