Safety in cattle feeds

SAFETY IN CATTLE FEED

  • Environmental pollution is done by the Malaria eradication programme and the team some times unload all DDT/BHC in the sentitive area of cattle sheds, cattle feed stores and rejected places. Their entry into the animal body and transfer to human beings is possible.
  • Pesticide residues are a source of head ache for feed producers. Now the use of DDT has been banned. But many other poisonous pesticides available in the market need not to used with utmost care. The preserved feeds must be safe and wholesome.
  • The pesticide traffic via cattle feed, fodders and environment or water specifically meant for milch animals and ultimately to milk for human use must be blocked.
  • It is safe to use deoiled feed ingredients in cattle feed mixed as the pesticides are fat soluble and the deoiling processes help in eliminating them from cattle feed ingredients.
  • The presence of aflatoxins is another limitation in cattle feeds. Groundnut cake suffers a lot in this respect compared with soyabean, sunflower cakes or fish meal.
  • As little as 4 mg toxin/kg feed can cause death in cattle. It is desirable to control the moisture content of the feed to around 10-12 percent during storage to reduce spoilage.
  • Complete ration is a normal ration where forages, concentrates, minerals and vitamins are blended together. It is a promising method for improving the utilisation of fibrous agricultural poor quality crop residues into a ready made balanced diet in mash or pelleted form for the ruminant.
  • Various fibrous agricultural residues like dried mixed grasses; straws from sorghum, paddy, wheat and safflower; sugarcane bagasse; fallen tree leaves; cotton seed hulls and wastes from wood and fruit pulp are amenable for use. This system has been introduced in recent years in developed countries with minimum labour use.
  • The concentrate - roughage levels can be varied from diet to diet to meet the optimum nutritional requirement for production. Apart from water and some-wastage and feeding costs; permits consumption of unpalatable portions of the feeding stuff by the animal; causes less digestible upsets in early lactation; reduces eating and rumination time and provides more rest for the animal.
  • More frequent feeding is desirable to reduce the load on the rumen and avoids changes in acidity (pH) of the ruminal fluid. Complete ration is very useful for landless, marginal and small farmers who could maintain cattle, buffaloes, sheep and goat in proper condition.
Last modified: Monday, 1 August 2011, 7:44 AM