Dairy Cows Ration Formulation – Easy Steps for Farmers

Dairy farmers often remained confused while formulating ration for dairy animals. It is important to feed balanced ration to dairy animals as feed contribute a major part of the cost of production.

Benefits of scientific animal feeding

1. Animal get almost exactly as per its body and production need
2. Due to balanced feeding farmer gets optimum production
3. It prevents wasteful expenditure
4. Improves immunity and make animals healthy
5. Reduces chances of infertility and improves reproductive efficiency
6. Variety of feed ingredients can be utilized

For scientific ration formulation, we need the following information 

1. Animal weight
2. Production
3. Age
4. State of pregnancy
5. Last calving date
6. Feed available

All the information is easy to collect except animal weight but first of all we need to know weight without that we cannot calculate exact ration

How to calculate the weight of dairy animal?

For this, you just need to measure chest girth of animal in inches/cm  as shown in picture and look into the corresponding column for weight in Kgs in the following table

Let us take an example of cow giving 12 litres of milk

Step 1 – Weight of animal comes 400Kg
Step 2 – thumb rule of ration balancing says that 400kg cow needs 10kg dry matter (2.5% of body weight)
Step 3 – second thumb rule says divide feed ingredients into roughage (fibre which includes green fodder and straw) and concentrate (which include grains, oil cakes etc.), Animal need 2/3rd fibre and 1/3rd concentrate.
Step 4 – this animal need 6.6kg fibre/roughage and 3.3kg concentrate feed.
Step 5 – fibre is divided in the ratio of 1:2 as green fodder and straw – 2.2Kg Green and 4.4Kg Straw
Step 6 – Green fodder contains 75% moisture, so to get 2.2Kg green dry matter we must take 8.8Kg Green, similarly straw contains 10% moisture, so straw must take around 4.88Kg
Step 7 – Concentrate feeding is done as per production for every litre of milk 300g concentrate is required, in this case, 3.6Kg concentrate would be given. Dry Matter in conc. Is 90% so nearly 4Kg conc. Must be given to sustain production

Total ration required in a day = 8.8Kg Green + 4.88Kg Straw + 4Kg  = 17.68Kg feed must be given 

Almost all ration are deficient in macro and micro minerals so calcium must be given in the form of feed grade DCP (not liquid calcium) and good quality mineral mixture.

If animal is in young and growing stage than 15% ration must be given extra (over calculation on weight basis)
If animal is in pregnancy 10% ration must be given extra in last trimester