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Bridging gap in feed resource and feeding management in dairy animals
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Saturday, 06 August, 2011, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Dr Bandla Srinivas and Dr A Obi Reddy
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Shortage in feed resources in developing countries is highlighted time and again without much improvement in the accuracy of estimates. Consortium of Indian Farmers Association (CIFA) is emphasising on those technologies which can improve the production without additional inputs (Fig. 1). The Planning Commission of India (PCI) supports policy for increasing the marginal profits of farmers and ensuring cheaper commodities to consumers based on market-driven demand and supply (Fig. 2).
The recent facts on climate change and risk drawn by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that the social and economic vulnerability (as a function of risk and hazard) is likely to increase among agriculture communities due to environmental variability. Brewing economic insecurity from agriculture income due to natural calamities need to be minimised by integrating with supplementary income from livestock economy. When a question of improving the marginal profits to the dairy farmers arises, the foremost drive that dictates profits is recurring expenditure on the feed resources.
Constraints in feed resource
The most prominent constraints in the way of feed security in many of the developing countries are
High seasonal fluctuations in the availability and quality of feeds
Unfavourable location of feedstuffs in respect to location of livestock
Lack of knowledge and socio-economical hindrances limiting the conservation and storage of feed resources
Domination of traditional perceptions and knowledge over the scientific feeding management of dairy animals
Based on the present situation (CIFA, PCI and IPCC), the principal requirement is efficient conversion process of inputs to outputs with efforts to reduce redundant handling losses. Feed efficiency for milk production can be ensured by feeding better quality feed resources, supplementing feed additives or improving the quality of low quality feed resources. The latter can be achieved by means of adopting better cultivars, using physical / chemical / biological means and / or, fortifying the diets with feed additives. Seasonal and location imbalance in feed resources needs paradigm shift in the feeding management of dairy animals by intensive use of available biomass from the forage resources in the respective agro-ecological zones, crop residues, agro-industrial by-products, non-conventional feed resources etc. Ensuring feed security to dairy animals is compounded by looming climate change, spiralling feed costs and timidity in agri-income. Since majority of ruminants are reared in rain-fed areas those are posed with wider shortage of quality feeds and seasonal shortage in quantity of feeds along with seasonal shortages in quantities. Efforts to improve feed resources would boost livestock production and encourage related entrepreneurship in rain-fed areas.
Oil cakes as protein source
Although the ability of ruminants to use non-protein nitrogen (NPN) source (e.g., urea, biuret etc.) to meet their partial protein requirements has been known for more than a century, it is poorly communicated to livestock owners. This advantage endowed to ruminants at the time of their evolutionary development in animal kingdom should be utilised to make their existence competitively with non-ruminants. This also helps in rational utilisation of protein resources among different classes of livestock. Often using molasses with urea has become a common practice in many of dairy animals' rations.
However, with increasing depth of knowledge in ruminant nutrition, starch from maize in urea-based rations as energy source was more effective than soluble sugars in molasses due to variation in their rate of fermentation that hardly matches with nitrogen capture by bacteria for microbial protein synthesis in the rumen. Perceptions on quantity of urea used in different types of dairy rations are also not clear among animal nutritionists, field veterinarians and extension workers. Scientifically urea nitrogen can be incorporated in ruminants ration upto 1/3 of total crude protein % or a maximum of 10% of total CP in high protein diets.
Simultaneously, the increasing orientation towards organic farming is also questioning the sanctity of using urea in dairy rations to supply the partial protein needs of ruminants. Sparing the policy decision on export of oilseed cakes out of the debate, scientifically it is possible to substitute the oil cake source of protein with NPN for maintenance needs of the dairy animals.
Using urea nitrogen to meet the non-productive maintenance needs of the dairy animals has advantage of reducing the feed cost by quantitatively replacing crude protein of oilseed cakes and also provides solution to protein shortage in ruminants. Addition of grain as source of energy is necessary precaution to be taken care when urea is used as source of nitrogen in the ration of dairy animals.
Approximately 100 g of urea in the dairy rations can be substituted to 600 to 750 g of groundnut (GN) cake (with 36 to 42% crude protein). However, when NPN is replaced with oilseed cakes, a minimum of 100 g of natural protein source from oilseed cakes apart from 500 g of grain should be ensured in the total ration.
Use of energy sources
Demand for oilseed cakes is there for both ruminant and non-ruminant rations but, grains in addition have competition from human consumption. Hence, the cost of grains is also increasing with rapid changes in the food habits of humans. Looking into the sociological structure of livestock sector in developing countries, soaking and cooking the grains would improve their efficiency of utilisation and reduces grain wastage in the faeces. Ruminants also have advantage over human or non-ruminant livestock with their ability to utilise cell wall carbohydrates due to presence of large population of microflora in the rumen. Since the process of fermentation occurring in the rumen is on the similar principles of alcohol production, some of the feed resources those can be exclusively utilised for ruminant animals are diverted to fermentation industries. Residues left over and wastage in these industries are only available for ruminant animals.
Further large quantities of agro-industrial by-products are also available from food industry with adoption of Western foods by human population. These feeds can be used as alternative feed resources in ruminant diets with little more precaution to health of the animals from any toxins they naturally contain or develop during storage. Simple sun-drying can reduce lot of anti-nutritional factors in non-conventional feed resources at no cost, particularly of tree origin. Even though some of the straws produced from food grains, cereals, pulses have negligible quantity of protein, they contain very slow releasing energy e.g., paddy straw, jowar kadbi etc. Because of abundant availability of crop residues in particular season in some of the locations, often they are used as fuel pellets for broilers in processing industry, brick industry etc., thus, creating a vacuum in ruminant feed resource. There are numerous scientific technologies available to moderately accelerate the energy releasing mechanism from these feeds by improving their rate of digestion in dairy animals. Since these bulk roughages have a problem of space for storage, it can be overcome by densifying into complete feed blocks of 1 to 5 kg or any other desired weight.
Promoting coexistence
Livestock industry enjoys absolute syntropy with process industry and consumer sectors. Procurement of raw material (milk and food grain
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