These All You Must Know Before Providing Cattle Food!

You might feel that feeding cattle is as easy as putting hay in front and that’s it. Well, it involves more than that. You must inquire about what needs to be fed to what cattle. Also, you must know the right quantity as the productivity depends a lot on that. Other than just green food, there are different types of feeds that need to be supplied to cater to the nutritional requirements of the animals. Additionally, you should have a good knowledge of the ruminant nutrition, the forage quality and ration formulation. However, your cattle food must be decided by assessing the cattle first and then coming up with a suitable ration for the animals.
While talking about cattle feed, how can we not speak of the importance of compound feed in production of milk. It is basically a balanced source of some essential nutrients that your cattle need for growth, body maintenance and milk production. This includes high quality grains, com-mon salt, minerals, vitamins, oil cakes or meals and bran.
Cattle feed comprises of energy, minerals, vitamins and proteins. It is particularly advantageous to feed pregnant animals for better development of the foetus. Moreover, it increases the reproductive efficiency and production of fat content milk. These feed will have impact on the animals only when it is provided in appropriate quantity. Too less or too more will either make no difference or end up harming the cattle.
Therefore, growing animals should be fed at least 1 to 1.5kg of food daily, whereas milking animals should consume 2kg of compound feed to maintain body and health. Additionally, 400g should be fed to cows and 500g to buffaloes to produce one liter of milk. Plus, extra 1kg of oil cake and 1 kg of compound cattle feed should be given to the pregnant animals during the last two months of pregnancy.
Even though you know the approximate quantity to be fed to your cattle you must know their productivity status too. The cattle can be divided into different types based on their intended production like growth, lactation and reproduction, weight, body condition score, gender and age. Also, cattle food must be given depending on the how much weight one should gain or lose.