 | Better Farming Series 08 - Animal Husbandry: Feeding and Care of Animals (FAO - INADES, 1976, 38 p.) |
 |  | Feeding animals |
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Food needs of animals
An animal must feed to live.
Many experiments have been made to find out what amounts of food an animal needs to live.
These are its maintenance requirement
These needs are different for each kind of animal and change according to the animal's weight.
Maintenance requirement of a 300-
kg cow
· Many experiments have been made to find out what amounts of food an animal needs to produce milk, meat, work.
These are its production requirement.
This requirement changes for each kind of production and according to the amount of production.
Production requirement to give 3
litres of milk
Many experiments have been made for each kind of animal to find out:
· the pregnancy requirement when
it is expecting young;
· the production
requirement when the mother is giving milk;
·
the requirement for growth when the young animal is growing.
Tables have been made which show for each animal the maintenance requirement according to weight production requirement according to production pregnancy requirement when it is expecting young growth requirement when it is growing.
To find out what an animal needs, add up all these requirements.
For example:
A cow weighing 300 kg which produces 3 litres of milk needs:
|
maintenance requirement: |
2.6 kg |
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production requirement |
1 |
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Total |
3.6 kg |
Total requirement of 300- kg
producing 3 litres of
milk
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