Food components needed for making animal feed • Sources of energy: (30 to 40%) maize, barley, wheat, jowar, oat etc. • Sources of proteins: (25 to 30%) cotton seed cake, ground nut cake, soybean etc. • Secondary components of the grain: (10 to 40%) wheat bran, paddy bran, broken rice, crushed green gram, crushed pigeon pea, crushed lentil and gram etc. • Sugarcane molasses (7 to 10%) • Salt: (1%) • Urea: (0.5 to 1.0%) • Mixture of minerals and salts: (2%) Method to prepare animal feed (for 100 kgs) • To start with, grind the components for proteins and mineral resources separately. • Mix 25-30 kgs of protein sources and 30-40 kgs of energy sources and add secondary components of grains to it. • As the sugarcane molasses is sticky, add it carefully. Finally, add urea, salt and mixture of minerals and salts. • Mix all the components well and make the mixture cohesive and keep it in a air tight bag at a dry place. Characteristics of best animal feed: • Best animal feed should have 18 to 20% proteins and 65 to 75% energy. • The moisture in the animal feed should not be more than 11%. This is because moist animal feed may get fungal infestation. While giving animal feed to the cattle: • If animals are fed with green maize and silage, then give 25% less animal feed. If lucerne, green fodder of barseem are given, given 50% less animal feed. • For first 7 to 8 days, increase the amount of animal feed gradually. Otherwise it may might disturb the digestion process and might increase the amount of acid in the stomach. • Use 1-3 types of animal feed depending on the milk production capability of the animal. • If it is given along with dry or green fodder, it increases digestive capacity. • Always keep animal feed at a dry place and away from animals. Reference - Agrowon 10th November 2017