What grasses do cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs mainly eat that grow fast?

To fatten and increase the weight of cattle, sheep, and pigs, in addition to ingesting sufficient high-quality forage grass, it is also necessary to add nutrient-rich concentrates. To raise various poultry well, you must first grow grass well. So what do cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs mainly eat that grows fast?

Feeding cattle

You can choose Mexican teosinte, alfalfa, tall fescue, napier grass, Sudan grass, etc. You should not plant succulent leafy forage grasses with high crude fiber content. Mexican teosinte is suitable for planting in areas with annual rainfall exceeding 800 mm and a frost-free period of more than 180 days. When the plant height reaches 1.5 m, it can be cut once a month. The dry matter of the forage contains 9.5% crude protein, 2.6% crude fat, and 27.3% crude fiber. The stems and leaves are crisp, tender, and juicy, sweet in taste, and highly palatable. It is also suitable for silage or making hay.

Feeding sheep

You can choose alfalfa, forage corn, amaranth, clover, Wintergrazer 70 ryegrass, etc. For sheep raised indoors during the dry grass period, the first choice is the perennial legume alfalfa. It prefers a semi-arid climate, has strong drought resistance, and is suitable for mountainous areas where goats are raised. Alfalfa has long been known as the “king of forage grasses.” It not only has high grass yield and excellent grass quality, but is also rich in protein, vitamins, and inorganic salts. Usually 4—5 kg of fresh grass can be sun-dried into 1 kg of hay. It is also suitable for making alfalfa meal into pellet feed or preparing a complete feed. Note that sheep are tolerant of coarse feed and should be fed together with coarse feed with high crude fiber content such as corn stalks.

Feeding pigs

Rumex, cup plant, comfrey, amaranth, bitter lettuce, Chinese milk vetch, sweet clover, etc. are all suitable for feeding pigs. Rumex and cup plant are both perennial herbaceous plants with extremely strong adaptability to planting regions, deep roots and lush leaves, strong regrowth ability, do not compete for land with grain and cash crops, and have high digestibility, making them suitable for monogastric animals such as pigs. When the plants grow to 70—90 cm tall, harvest them, 3—4 times a year. The entire leaves can be fed to pigs, or they can be cut into 2—3 cm small sections and mixed with corn stalk powder at a 3:1 ratio for feeding, achieving complementary nutritional advantages. However, regardless of the feeding method, the feeding amount must not be too much, to prevent affecting the intake of concentrate feed.

Feeding rabbits

You can choose chicory, Italian ryegrass, bitter lettuce, sweet clover, alfalfa king, napier grass, etc., with chicory being especially good. Chicory is a perennial herbaceous plant in the Asteraceae family. It is cold-tolerant and heat-tolerant, has low soil requirements, can be continuously used for more than 10 years after one sowing, and has extremely strong disease resistance. Cut when the plant height is 50 cm, once every 30 days. Each hectare can produce more than 150,000 kg of fresh grass. It has excellent palatability and can better satisfy rabbits' habit of liking fresh grass. It can be mixed with sweet clover, alfalfa meal, etc. for feeding. The amount of forage grass fed should account for 50% of the total feed.

Feeding geese

Geese are tolerant of coarse feed. Forage grasses suitable for feeding them include Russian comfrey (comfrey), cup plant, amaranth, tall fescue, chicory, etc. Russian comfrey is a perennial Polygonaceae forage grass that has emerged in recent years. It is cold-tolerant and resistant to high temperatures, is not selective about soil, and can be planted in farmland, barren hills, idle plots, and along rivers and roadsides. It can also be interplanted with fruit trees and economic forests. In northern regions, it can be cut 4—5 times in spring, summer, and autumn. In southern regions, it can be cut 5—6 times a year, with a yield of 900—1500 tons per hectare. The yield per 667 sq m can meet the annual green feed needs of 130 geese. When feeding, it can be reasonably combined with the other forage grasses of the above families and genera. The effect is better when prepared into a mixed feed.

Feeding chickens

Whether laying hens or broilers, due to their physiological characteristics, they are not suitable for eating large amounts of forage grass. However, for small-scale chicken raising by farmers, in summer and autumn, an appropriate amount of some stem-and-leaf forage grass leaves can be selected, such as chicory, bitter lettuce, Russian comfrey, and even bok choy, sweet potato leaves, etc., chopped and fed to chickens to promote balanced nutrient absorption.

Raising pigs

Forage grasses such as European chicory, cup plant, bitter lettuce, American grain amaranth, Rumex, k-1, alfalfa, Mexican corn, sorghum-Sudan grass, sainfoin, etc. have relatively comprehensive nutritional components. Calculated on a dry matter basis, the crude protein content is relatively high, generally above 12%, with the highest reaching 30%, and the amino acid types are complete with high utilization rate. They can make up for the shortcoming of incomplete protein and amino acid types in grain feed. They also contain relatively rich vitamins and inorganic salts, have low crude fiber content, are easy to digest, have good palatability, high yield per unit area of land, low production cost, and wide sources.

Select superior forage grasses according to the breeding project

1. For raising pigs, use chicory, alfalfa, comfrey, amaranth, bitter lettuce.

2. For raising cattle and sheep, choose napier grass, alfalfa, chicory, Rumex, ryegrass, Mexican corn, Sudan grass, sorghum-Sudan grass.

3. First choice for fish farming: Mexican corn, sorghum-Sudan grass, Sudan grass, napier grass, alfalfa, ryegrass, clover.

4. Forage grasses suitable for feeding geese include chicory, alfalfa, napier grass, Russian comfrey, Rumex, Mexican corn, bitter lettuce, etc.

5. For raising chickens, you can choose: chicory, alfalfa, and bitter lettuce as the best first choices, chopped for feeding to promote balanced nutrient absorption. Bitter lettuce can also prevent poultry diseases.

6. For raising rabbits, the first choices are chicory, alfalfa, napier grass, ryegrass, bitter lettuce, Mexican corn, etc., with chicory and alfalfa especially good. The amount of forage grass fed should account for 50% of the total feed.

7. For locust farming, the first choices are napier grass, ryegrass, Mexican corn, Sudan grass, and sorghum-Sudan grass. Fresh grass cannot be directly made into feed pellets. It must be sun-dried and crushed, then mixed with other concentrates to make pellet feed.