How to improve milk production in cattle using natural supplements

by Vivek Choudhary Nice life

A high yielding animal requires a customized diet formulated after understanding the highly integrated metabolic pathways that ensure better qualitative and quantitative yield.

Milk composition is economically vital to milk producers and processors and nutritionally crucial to consumers. Hence, there has been stringency in the assessment and evaluation of milk, which includes determining parameters like SNF (Solid Not Fat) that has become the price-determining factor in the dairy industry. Thus, the increase in cattle feed is highly desirable for farmers. This need can be satisfied by a simple yet very effective approach that is accurate feed management. Balanced nutrition means supplying adequate amounts of macronutrients like carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and micronutrients like vitamins and minerals.

Given below are the brief roles of these ingredients.

Piperine:

Enhancing the bioavailability of nutritional compound in two ways,

a) By increased absorption from the gut and

b) By the slowdown of biotransformation, inactivation or elimination from the system.

Flavonoids:

They have anti-oxidative properties. They modify rumen microbial activity and create desirable fermentation conditions such as pH regulation, propionate proportion and protein degradation. Once absorbed in mammary glands after circulation in the blood, they significantly alter milk's nutritional composition.

Polyphenols:

They protect proteins from degradation and improve the conversion of plant proteins to animal proteins (milk). The best cattle feed in India by enhancing this conversion of dietary proteins; they also increase the delivery of amino acids for absorption in the small intestine, thereby improving the milk production and growth.

Mannans:

They serve as a growing medium for the beneficial flora found in the gut. They help in establishing a balance microflora in the intestine (aerobiosis). They are also indirectly responsible for the suppression of unwanted microbes.

Thus all these actions work in the synergy that takes care of diverse parameters, positively influencing the animal.

Provide a flake of alfalfa/grass hay for the first five days after calving. Early lactation diet should contain plenty of good quality digestible fibre (31 to 35 per cent neutral detergent fibre). Maintain fibre mat with consistent feed intake and avoid empty bunks.

Cattle feed supplement is an essential component of diets for all humans as it is high in essential amino acids that are most likely to be deficient in diets based on vegetable protein. Although milk is a high-cost source of protein and fat relative to vegetable sources, it is readily saleable particularly in the more affluent urban areas of developing countries. Therefore, improving milk production is an essential tool for improving life quality, particularly for rural people in developing countries.

Milk production systems in tropical countries are diverse. At the one extreme, the techniques are similar to those in most industrialised countries. They are based on high genetic potential cows given "high quality feeds" which include fodder crops/silages and grain and protein concentrates. Milk production per cow is extraordinarily high, and technological inputs are high.

At the other cattle feed manufacturers are systems used by the vast majority of small farmers in developing countries and are based on low inputs and productivity per cow. These small-farmer systems vary from ones in which cows or buffaloes are fed on crop residues, agro-industrial by-products and roadside grass to beef cattle grazing tropical pastures that are milked once a day, with the calf having access to the dam for the other half of each day.