Designing Feeding Facilities to Maintain Feed Quality

摘要

Feeding facilities associated with commercial dairy farms should provide an efficient and economical method to produce high quality total mixed rations (TMR) for the dairy herd. It is important that feed quality be preserved and shrink minimized fromdelivery of the feedstuff to the farm until it is placed in the bunk for consumption by the herd. Feed quality can be defined in many different ways. Many times, feed quality is associated with nutrient composition. While extremely important to dairy nutrition, nutrient composition is only the start of defining feed quality. Feed quality factors also include consistency, particle length, anti-quality factors, texture, odor, taste, and temperature. Of the feedstuffs on the dairy, wet products are generally the greatest source of variation and have the greatest potential to reduce the quality of the TMR. Feeding facilities should be designed in a manner to maximize the quality of the TMR by effectively minimizing factors that would reduce TMR quality. One of the major issues with reduced feed quality is associated with shrink of wet feedstuffs. As wet feedstuffs shrink, feed quality is often reduced due to the impact of bacteria, yeast, molds, and moisture loss. Nutrient loss and the increase in anti-quality factors associated with shrink often result in significant losses of production in addition to the economic losses often associated with physical loss of dry matter (Brouk, 2009).