Feeding standards
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A knowledge of the nutritive value of different feeds is necessary to prepare a balanced ration to the animal. However, before a ration can be formulated for an animal, its requirements are first to be known. The ration is classified as maintenance and production ration.
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The usual practice is to divide the requirements into two parts. The maintenance requirement indicates the amount of nutrients to be supplied to an adult animal so that it may carry out its vital processes without loosing or gaining weight. This requirement depends on the live weight or more precisely on the surface of the body of the animal althoughnot strictly proportional.
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In the case of growing animal or lactating animal or an animal in advanced stage of pregnancy or working animal, extra nutrients have to provided. The excess will depend on the nature and quantity of production. Thus, a cow giving 4% milk fat will require less quantity of extra nutrients than a buffalo of the same body weight giving same quantity of milk but containing 7% milkfat.
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Similarly, a bullock working 8 h/day will require more nourishment than another working 4 h/day. For milk and work production the figures are to be added to the maintenance requirements per day. These figures are based on foreign data and slightly on the higher side. However, it is better to stick to higher figures at least for the valuable cattle.
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In devising production ration, the nature and quantum of production has to be considered. For example a calf growing 0.5 kg/day needs more nutrient than another growing at 0.25 kg/day.
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In this case the nutritive ratio should be narrower than that of maintenance ration. This holds good for milk production where the quantity of milk as well as milk fat percentage needs to be taken together.
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For work production extra protein has to be supplied. For this therefore a supplementary feed with wide nutritive ratio has to be added to the maintenance ration.
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Last modified: Monday, 1 August 2011, 7:37 AM
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