Inadequate feeding is the major factor for low livestock productivity in India. In dairying, feed cost is a major input and feeding practices has to be improved to ensure profits. Still the small scale farmers are following traditional feeding practices and fail to address the complexities involved in ration formulation. To address the complexities in ration balancing based on the nutrient requirements for different categories of livestock, nutrient composition of wide range of feed resources and the cost-a number of expert systems have been developed. However existing expert systems have not been widely used by majority of small farmers due to lack of awareness, access and basic skills required to operate. To address these limitations, "Feed Assist" a farmer friendly expert system for balanced feeding of dairy animals at least cost has been developed using linear programming. "Feed Assist" does not require much expertise to operate and enables the farmers to formulate least cost rations for different categories of livestock using locally available feed resources.
The objective of this study was to examine the impact of three categories of supplements on intake and diet induced difference on degradation of straw substrates. Sixteen crossbred cattle fitted with rumen cannula were randomly divided into 4 equal groups. Animals were fed on wheat straw ad libitum without any supplement except mineral mixture (control; T 1 ) or supplemented with concentrate mixture (CS; T 2 ) or green Lucerne (GLS; T 3 ) or urea-molasses block lick (ULS; T 4 ). Total dry matter intake in T 2 , T 3 and T 4 was increased by 70, 54 and 49%, respectively compared to T 1 which was only 1.55 kg/100 kg B.Wt. Other than control animals, straw intake was less on T 3 than T 2 or T 4 . In Sacco degradation of untreated and urea treated wheat or paddy straw in different treatments indicated that the supplements had a significant (p<0.01) impact on rapidly soluble (A) and insoluble but potentially degradable (B) fractions of straw. Urea treatment increased fraction-A but, provision of supplement improved fraction-B also. Effective degradation (ED) of OM was better on T 2 . Rate of degradation (C) of OM and CWC was dependent on diet and type of straw but hemicellulose and cellulose were related to latter factor only. ED of cell wall carbohydrates (CWC) was similar in T 2 and T 4 but higher than T 3 . CS was more effective in improving the degradation of both untreated and urea treated straw while ULS was effective on the former only. CS had more impact on superior quality straw while contrary was true with ULS. Although GLS improved intake and degradability of untreated and urea treated straws, its bulkiness affected the straw intake compared to other supplements.
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