"separate meal system" for concentrate feeding of dairy cows

In order to improve the breeding efficiency of dairy cows, in addition to selecting cows with high-yield genetic characteristics, it is very important to provide nutritionally balanced and relatively low-cost diets to meet the nutritional needs of dairy cows. As the diet of ruminants-dairy cows, first of all, we should maximize the use of roughage. This is because roughage is not only cheap and can reduce feed cost, but also contains high fiber and low nutrient concentration, which can satisfy chewing, ruminating and filling and satiety of digestive tract. It is precisely because the nutrient concentration of roughage is low, so roughage alone can not meet the balanced demand of energy, protein, minerals, vitamins and other nutrients for dairy cows, especially for high-yield dairy cows, a certain amount of concentrate must be provided.

Different dairy cows need different nutrients due to different milk production performances. the higher the milk yield, the higher the nutrient concentration of the diet, and the higher the proportion of concentrate in the diet. In the case of a more reasonable mix of green and coarse materials, in addition to maintenance needs, cows with daily milk production of less than 20 kg are generally fed with 1 kg of concentrate for every 4-3 kg of milk; for those producing 21-30 kg of milk, 1 kg of concentrate is fed for every 3-2.5 kg of milk; for those producing more than 30 kg of milk, 1 kg of concentrate is fed for every 2.5 kg of milk, and concentrate concentration should be adjusted and high-quality roughage should be selected.

In most of the dairy farms in China, the dairy cow population is small, the scale is not large, it is impossible to group according to milk production, due to equipment and technology and other reasons, it is rare to implement full mixed diet feeding. At present, most farms (households) implement the feeding method of coarse feed and concentrate according to the ratio of milk to feed. In practice, many farms (households) feed concentrate according to their total milk production, and then feed them evenly to each cow. In this way, the total supply of nutrients seems to be quite a lot, but because the cows with high and low milk production get the same concentrate-to-roughage ratio, after they also feel full, the cows with high milk production may not eat enough nutrition, while the cows with low milk production may be overnourished.

The implementation of cow concentrate "separate meal system" can better solve this problem. The so-called "separate meal system" of cow concentrate means that according to the quality of coarse feed (if the quality of coarse feed is poor, the amount of concentrate should be increased appropriately), weigh the concentrate one by one according to the different milk yield of the cow (for example, a small bucket for each cow), and implement it to each cow to ensure how much milk each cow can produce and how much concentrate to eat.

The implementation of the "separate meal system" of dairy concentrate has the following advantages:

The main results are as follows: 1. To ensure that high-yield cattle are fed with enough nutrients to meet the nutritional needs of their high-yield milk.

2. It can control the nutrient intake of low-yield cattle and prevent the body condition of low-yield cattle from being overweight.

3. It is beneficial to meet the balanced needs of nutrients of dairy cows and ensure the normal physiological function and metabolism of rumen.

4. It is beneficial to make full use of roughage, reduce feed cost and improve feeding benefit.

The "separate meal system" should be weighed as concentrate according to the milk yield of each cow, which will increase the workload, but the increase in management costs will be rewarded several times in terms of the increase in milk production and the reduction of feed costs. Zhang Yanfeng