Hello All,
Please help me,
I have 5 cows, all used to eat rice hay properly for some days, but gradually they reduced intake of dry fodder, in turn they keep waiting for green fodder, even though I intentionally feed them green fodder lately. This resulting in a serious impact on FAT and SNF content of milk.
Can you please help me out how can I make sure my cows eat rice hay.
Best Regards,
Chandra
Dear Chandra,
To get good fat and SNF in cow milk you must feed balanced ration to animals consisting of green fodder, dry fodder, cattle feed and mineral mixture.
Presently you are feeding Rice straw to cows. other dry fodder which you can feed to cows is wheat bhusa & sorghum kadvi which are better than rice straw in quality.
Green fodder of maize, sorghum, bajra along with cowpea, ricebean , berseem, lucerne is good for cows and helps in increasing milk yield and quality.
Before feeding green or dry fodder to cows, use chaffcutter to chop it in to small pieces of 1 to 2 cm and then mix them together .
Daily give some good quality cattle feed, concentrates and mineral mixture to animals acccoding to milk yield.
For more informations, read literature given on this site on animal nutrition and green fodder.
regards,
Digvijay Singh
Hello Digvijay,
Thanks for your response,
In my locality, we could not get Wheat Bhusa, where as I am feeding as below:
After milking :
By Pass pellets concent feed, 50g Mineral Mixture, Grounded Maize corn 2 kg each cow.
Morning 9:00AM - Rice hay,
10:00 AM to 4:00PM chaffed CO4 and Maize in four intervals
4:00 Pm to 6:00 PM grazing in fields and for exercise purpose.
Milking them at 6:00 PM
(By Pass pellets concent feed, 50g Mineral Mixture, Grounded Maize corn) - 2 kg each cow.
7:30 Pm- Rice hay
8:30 PM - chaffed CO4 and Maize in two intervals
In between we let them drink water four to five times.
This is what we are following.
Can you please suggest how can we improve or anything we can add more value to what we are doing now?
We are sowing Sorgham and Bajra. We could not grow Berseem and Lucerne.
Thanks & Best Regards,
Chandra
You should feed your animals properly two times in a day. ie. Morning and evening after milking.
if you don't have berseem or lucerne than try to grow some other leguminous fodder crops like cowpea, ricebean and feed 5 to 10 kg per day to animals along with maize, sorghum or CO 4 in mixed feeding.
Daily fodder:
Oats/Maize /sorghum/CO 4 green fodder - 10 to 15 kg per animal
Cowpea or ricebean: 5 to 10 kg per animal
Dry fodder 4 to 5 kg per day per animal. chop & mix green and dry fodder together before feeding to animals.
Give concentrates 400 to 500 grams per litre of milk and mineral mixture 10 grams per litre of milk to animals .
To improve nutritive value of your green fodder crops, apply 5 ton farm yard manure per ha in field before sowing and follow recommended agricultural practice in fodder cultivation as given in our fodder cultivation booklet.
Read fodder booklet and watch fodder films which are available on this site.
regards,
Digvijay Singh