tailieunhanh - Dairy cattle husbandry - Part 2

Feeding of the cattle After reading this chapter you should be able to weigh up your animals' needs against the economic possibilities available to you. Here we give you information on the various types of feed for cattle and the needs of the animal. | 3 Feeding of the cattle After reading this chapter you should be able to weigh up your animals needs against the economic possibilities available to you. Here we give you information on the various types of feed for cattle and the needs of the animal. Stomach functioning and feed requirements Animals need water and food in order to live grow work and give milk. Even when the cow is not producing it needs energy to breathe walk and ruminate and it needs protein to grow meat contains a lot of protein . The basic need which is necessary to maintain a stable condition is called the maintenance requirement . The maintenance requirement is higher for a big cow than for a smaller one. The type of cow can play an important role in maintenance requirement. A local breed will have a lower requirement than an exotic or crossbred breed. Production requirement is the requirement of extra feed for growth work and or milk production. The cow The cow is a ruminant as are sheep and goats. Ruminants are cud chewing animals with a stomach divided into four compartments. The first compartment the rumen is where food is partly digested before being regurgitated to be chewed as cud. This activity is called ruminating see also Chapter 4 . The rumen is very big with a capacity of 200 - 300 litres depending of the size of the animal see figure 4 . The rumen is specialized for the digestion of roughage such as grass or hay feed that is useless to other animals. Grasses and herbs may contain up to 80 of water. Although cows need a lot of water roughage contains very little of the valuable substances needed for maintenance or production. Therefore cows need very large quantities of roughage. A big cow with a big stomach rumen may eat more roughage. She needs it because her maintenance requirement is higher but she can Feeding of the cattle 15 produce more as well. Although cows are adapted for eating large quantities of roughage they can also eat other types of feed such as grains but .