LPM 121: Fodder Production and Grassland Management (1+1)

COMPUTING RATION FOR A MILCH BUFFALO

• Suppose a ration is needed for a milch buffalo weighing 450 kg and giving 10 kg milk with 8% milk fat. The available feeds are green maize, wheat bhusa, crushed maize, crushed gram, groundnut cake and wheat bran. The dry matter consumption will be 12 kg. The maintenance requirement will be 0.28 kg DCP and 3.37 kg TDN/day. This can be met as follows.

Feed	Quantity (kg)	DM (kg)	DCP (kg)	TDN (kg)
Green maize	16.0	4.0	0.17	2.7
Wheat Bhusa	3.0	2.7	0.00	1.3
Groundnut Cake	0.25	0.2	0.10	0.7
	19.25	6.9	0.27	4.7

• For the production requirement for 10kg milk with 8% fat an additional requirement of 0.69 kg DCP and 5.53 kg TN is needed. This can be given by 5 kg of concentrate mix with maize 50%, gram 30%, groundnut cake 20% and wheat bran 10%. One kg of mix with have 0.17 DCP and 0.83 kg TDN. Thus,

Feed	Quantity (kg)	DM (kg)	DCP (kg)	TDN (kg)
Maintenance ration	19	6.9	0.27	4.7
Concentrate mix	5	4.5	0.85	4.3
Total intake	24	11.4	1.12	9.0
Total requirement		11.5	0.97	8.9

• In urban areas the farmers have no source of getting quality green fodder and hence they are forced to use costly compounded feeds to meet most part of the ration and part of the energy requirements for maintenance and milk production. Such a ration for a 400 kg cow giving 8 kg milk with 4.5% milkfat is shown below:

Feed	Quantity (kg)	DM (kg)	DCP (kg)	TDN (kg)
Wheat Bhusa	7	6.3	0.00	3.01
Concentrate mix	4	3.6	0.64	2.92
Total intake	11	9.9	0.64	5.93
Requirement		10.0	0.65	5.84