Does anyone know how to balance feed rations for cattle?

Question

Possibly using a formula

Answer 1

If you want to learn how to balance a ration for cattle, pick up a book named Morrison's Feeds and Feeding.  It has a very simple formula for balancing a ration from almost any kind of feed that is available.  It is a book that you will value as long as you are involved in raising any kind of livestock.

Answer 2

The Pearson Square is probably the most basic thing to use.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/livest... has good instructions on how to use the Pearson Square.

Answer 3

Pearson Sqare

Answer 4

Yes I can balance a feed ration for cattle.  First you have to know the desired results of the feeding program.  Fattening cattle require different rations than milk cows, bulls at work, or maintaining gestating cows.  there are many optimizing programs where you can define the levels of nutrients you want in the final ration.  then by supplying or defining those nutreients in all the ingredients you have available you can solve for the optimum solution.  Microsoft has an optimizer in Excel.  these work using a linear programming technigue and are most often based on providing a least cost formulation.  (supplying all the required parameters with a mixture that costs the least.)  Extreme care is required because formulating to provide minimum amounts of nutrients without regard to interactions can be dangerous.  Somtimes it is better to overformulate including saftey margins than it is to provide the "cheapest' ration.  although it is more difficult to define your optimized parameter can be for maximum gain, maximum milk production, maximum use of the most readily available feed, etc.