Ways to make poor quality animal fodder nutritious

A farm employee poses next to a dairy cow in the farm. Good quality feeds provide the animal with adequate energy for maintenance, growth and most importantly for production. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • While this is a fact many livestock keepers know, the ongoing drought has made access to quality fodder a mirage.
  • Low quality feeds are not easily digested by the animals leading to decreased production. Besides, such dry fodder provides little energy to your herd.
  • Growing of crops such as lucerne or sweet potato vines can be of great help to a farmer.
  • Animals can also be taken out on the fields and farms to graze after harvesting of crops where they can eat whatever is left after the harvest and put back manure on to the ground to fertilise the farm.

Feeding animals good quality fodder helps to improve their health and energy for milk and meat production.

While this is a fact many livestock keepers know, the ongoing drought has made access to quality fodder a mirage.

What many farmers are landing their hands on currently are dry old grass, dry stalks and any other kind of dry fodder, which certainly is of poor quality.

Low quality feeds are not easily digested by the animals leading to decreased production. Besides, such dry fodder provides little energy to your herd.

Further, poor quality feeds only fill up the animal and stop it from eating more to get the energy it needs for maintenance, growth and production. Much of the poor feed is wasted and comes out in the animal waste.

Good quality feeds, on the other hand, provide the animal with adequate energy for maintenance, growth and most importantly for production.

Animals get most benefits from good quality feeds which they can easily digest to enhance growth, maintain good health and increase production of products such as meat and milk.

However, the good news is that as a farmer, one can better their low quality fodder and boost milk production.

Growing of crops such as lucerne or sweet potato vines can be of great help to a farmer.

The two are rich in proteins and are good for maintaining and improving the health of the animal, improving growth and most importantly increasing production.

MIX WITH GOOD QUALITY FEED

When you feed the two to a lactating animal, they help in stimulating the milk let down, therefore, increasing the quality and quantity of milk produced.

Thus, as a farmer you can turn a poor quality feed by mixing a handful of lucerne or sweet potato vines with about ten handfuls of chopped dry straws to make it a much better feed.

Please note that chopping dry or poor quality fodder does not make it better, it only encourages the animal to eat more of it.

Such chopped fodder, therefore, needs to be mixed with other good quality feeds to improve its quality to enhance production.

Animals can also be taken out on the fields and farms to graze after harvesting of crops where they can eat whatever is left after the harvest and put back manure on to the ground to fertilise the farm.

To improve poor feeds, farmers can also harvest pods from acacia trees and add them to the forage.

Acacia pods are high in protein and animals digest them easily.

Normally, animals only digest the outer shell of the pods so that seeds come out in the waste and can grow into new trees which will later mature to produce new pods and the same process can go on and forth.

Other ways of improving the quality of feeds is by mixing buttermilk with straws to make better quality feed that can provide the animals with energy necessary for maintenance, growth and production.

The writer is based at the Department of Dairy, Food Science and Technology, Egerton University.