Crop residues and dry grasses are the major sources of forages for feeding livestock in most farms.
Dear Daktari
I have just harvested maize and I am using maize stovers to feed my cows. But I have noticed a drop in milk production.
Maybe this is due to low intake which I have also observed. An extension services officer told us not to burn the maize stovers but to feed them to our cows.
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But I am looking at stopping this because milk is my business. Is there a way in which these dry feeds can be processed to increase their intake and nutritive value?
[Onesmus Kongoti,Trans Nzoia County]
Thanks, Onesmus for your question. Feed is a critical component for any livestock production system.
The productivity of dairy and beef animals is greatly constrained by the lack of green fodder and good quality feed, mainly due to availability throughout the year and the high cost to be incurred.
Crop residues and dry grasses are the major source of forages for feeding livestock in most farms.
These feeds are deficient in fermentable nitrogen, carbohydrates and minerals. This results in significant reduction of milk, growth and even wool production.
The main challenge with these crop residues is their palatability – being attractive to the animal and subsequently being eaten in large quantities.
Wheat and rice straw, maize and sorghum stovers have seasonal availability and might be the only feed available to most farms during the dry season.
There are a number of ways of increasing their palatability. You can chop them into smaller pieces or add molasses.
Chopping increases intake without necessarily increasing the nutritive value; while molasses adds nutritive value in addition to increasing the intake.
However, the use of Urea Molasses Mineral Blocks does significantly increase the dry fibrous feed intake and digestibility.
What is Urea Molasses Mineral Block?
This is a high protein, carbohydrate, mineral and vitamins concentrated feed.
The protein acts to increase the population of gut microbes and subsequently improves the digestion of fibre which is a main component of Wheat and rice straw, maize and sorghum stovers.
Why should you use Urea Molasses Mineral Block?
Ruminants have a digestive system suited to digest fibrous feeds, this can be improved with the modification of the gut micro-flora that play a critical role in the digestion of the fibrous feeds.
Dry feeds like maize stovers and straw are deficient in proteins, minerals and vitamins. In addition, their digestibility is low.
Urea Molasses Mineral Block help in the digestion of lignin in these fibrous by stimulating an increase in microbes in the gut hence better digestion through an efficient fermentation and subsequently increased production of microbial proteins.
These microbes will pass from rumen to abomasum and meet the requirement of protein which in turn increase milk, meat and wool production.
Urea-molasses-mineral blocks are a strategic feed supplement for ruminants which provides a constant source of fermentable nitrogen to promote the growth of rumen microbes.
-Dr. Othieno is a veterinary surgeon and the head of communications at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Kenya. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of FAO but his own
