Feeding concentrate to dairy herds should adopt the "individual ration system"

To improve the economic returns of dairy farming, in addition to selecting cows with high-yielding genetic traits, it is crucial to provide a diet that meets the nutritional needs of the cows, is nutritionally balanced, and is relatively low in cost. As a ruminant, the cow's diet must first make maximum use of roughage. This is because roughage is not only low in price, which can reduce feed costs, but also contains a relatively high amount of fiber and has a low nutrient concentration, which can satisfy chewing, rumination, and the filling and satiety of the digestive tract. It is precisely because roughage has a low nutrient concentration that roughage alone cannot meet the cow's balanced requirements for energy, protein, minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients. Especially for high-yielding cows, a certain amount of concentrate must be supplied.

Different individual cows have different milk production performance and therefore different nutritional needs. The higher the milk yield, the higher the nutrient concentration required in the diet, and the higher the proportion of concentrate in the diet. When the combination of green fodder and roughage is relatively reasonable, in addition to maintenance needs, generally for cows producing less than 20 kg of milk per day, 1 kg of concentrate is fed for every 4-3 kg of milk produced; for those producing 21-30 kg, 1 kg of concentrate is fed for every 3-2.5 kg of milk produced; for those producing more than 30 kg, 1 kg of concentrate is fed for every 2.5 kg of milk produced, and the concentrate concentration should be adjusted and high-quality roughage selected.

In dairy farming in China, most farms (households) have relatively small dairy herds and are not yet large in scale, so it is impossible to group cows by milk yield. Due to reasons such as equipment and technology, fully mixed ration feeding is rarely practiced. At present, most farms (households) practice the feeding method of providing sufficient roughage and feeding concentrate according to the milk-to-feed ratio. In actual operation, many farms (households) determine the amount of concentrate fed based on total milk production, and then feed it evenly to each cow. In this way, the total nutrient supply may not seem small, but because high-yielding and low-yielding cows are together and receive a diet with the same concentrate-to-roughage ratio, after they all feel full, the high-yielding cows may not consume enough nutrients, while the low-yielding cows may receive excessive nutrition.

Implementing the "individual ration system" for dairy cow concentrate can better solve this problem. The so-called "individual ration system" for dairy cow concentrate means that according to the quality of the roughage (if the roughage quality is poor, the amount of concentrate should be appropriately increased) and according to the different milk yields of the cows, the amount of concentrate is weighed out one by one (for example, a small bucket for each cow) and assigned to each individual cow, ensuring that each cow receives concentrate according to how much milk it produces.

Implementing the "individual ration system" for dairy cow concentrate has the following benefits:

1. It ensures that high-yielding cows consume enough nutrients to meet the nutritional needs of their high milk production.

2. It can control the nutrient intake of low-yielding cows and prevent low-yielding cows from becoming overweight.

3. It helps meet the cows' balanced nutritional requirements and ensures the normal physiological function and metabolism of the rumen.

4. It helps make full use of roughage, reduce feed costs, and improve feeding efficiency.

The "individual ration system" requires weighing concentrate separately according to each cow's milk yield, which will increase the workload, but the increase in management cost will be repaid several times over through increased milk yield and reduced feed costs. Zhang Yanfeng