Fodder Production and Grassland Management

FEEDING SYSTEMS

• Feeding on exclusive grazing: Animals are let out for grazing for 6-8 hrs daily.
• Feeding on roughage supplemented grazing: Common in low rainfall areas, where grazing is limited on poor pasture, road sides and canal bunds. The animals are offered dry crop residues (bhusa, straw,etc) during a larger part of the year.
• Feeding on grazing supplemented with concentrates: Grazing of animals followed by feeding of concentrates (grains, grams, oil cakes etc.) to productive dairy animals and working bullocks.
• Stall feeding of all roughage rations: All roughage ration may be of single forage or mixture of 2 or more forages. The combination mostly fall in the following categories
  • Dry roughages: Straw, stovers, mixed grass hay, legumious hay, cereal crop hay fed either as long hay or chaffed
  • Green forage feeding: The feeding of green chaff of cultivated forages is limited to a small period of kharif seasons.
  • Feeding of mixed forage: The mixture of forages depends on their availability with the farmers and not with the choice for balancing or palatability and feeding value of the forage.
• Stall feeding of forage: Concentrate diets - This system of feeding is common where there is no scope of grazing due to shifting of entire land under the grain and cash crops.
• Feeding of compounded feeds: Feeding of compounded feeds with basal roughage of wheat bhusa or chaffed paddy straw is limited to unorganised and organised daries of towns and cities.