Home | Breeds | Healthcare | Housing | Nutrition | Management | Reproduction | Milk | Miscellaneous

Translate this page in your preferred language:

Complete Feed Block
Back
Complete Feed Block
  • Most of the livestock rearing regions face the problem of acute shortage of feed resources.
  • The area under green fodder cultivation is shrinking due to increase in human population and urbanization.
  • As a result, the bulk of feeds available for ruminants in these regions are the crop residues.
  • The crop residues have low nutritional value and are bulky and fibrous.
  • In addition, availability of crop residues varies with season and region.
  • In some regions there is deficiency of crop residues, while in some other regions they are available in abundance but are largely wasted.






One of the options for effective management of the crop residues is to use specially designed pick-up type field balers for securing residual straw from the fields, followed by the use of processing technologies for the commercial manufacture of straw-based complete feed blocks for ruminants.
 
Manufacturing process:
  • The first step in the process of making complete Feed Blocks is the grinding and mixing of concentrate ingredients separately.
  • This is followed by adding concentrate components to chopped straw in desired proportions along with molasses in a mixer, taking care that mixing is uniform and ingredients are not separated due to gravity.
  • Finally, the desired quantity of straw-concentrate mix is transferred to a hydraulic press to convert the mix into densified blocks.
  • The major components are forage and concentrate, added in different ratios, depending upon the level of production while the minor component constitutes micronutrients and feed additives.

Feed hopper machine for making feed blocks
This process causes physical attachment of the minute concentrate particulate matter to fibrous straw particles with the help of a binder, so much so that there is hardly any opportunity for the animal to select the feed components. This not only brings uniformity to the feed, but also increases the palatability of the straw based feeds and minimizes the feed wastage.

Back
Developed by :
Jaspal Singh
(Ex. M.V.Sc Scholar )		  Dr. Pranav Kumar
(Assistant Professor) 		Amandeep Singh
(Final Year B.V.Sc & AH student)
Division of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education
Faculty of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry, R.S. Pura, SKUAST Jammu