In Punjab, however, commercial dairy farms are becoming very popular these days but even then there is a large number of farmers who are keeping 3-5 dairy animals for domestic consumption and relying upon feeding wheat straw during scarcity of green fodder or other fodders. Therefore, is there any alternative to wheat straw for these small dairy farms? Kindly give suggestions and reactions.
My question will be, do those small farmers have other sources of fodder?
If not, perhaps you should think on how to improve straw digestibility. For instance by adding urea and/or reducing straw particle size.
In here, a source. But there are more recent scientific experiments about this topic.
http://www.fao.org/ag/aga/agap/frg/lrrd/lrrd9/3/milt931.htm
Ruminal bacteria are adapted to digest this type of feed as a energy source and use urea as a source of NH4 for protein production. There is always a pool of NH4 available in the rumen. This pool comes from endogenous urea secretion. However, on the long term NH4 pool size depends on the diet. If straw is the only source of NH4 this might limit bacterial growth. Therefore, the addition of an extra protein source (Urea) will help them to improve straw digestion (bacterial growth).
Be careful not to exceed urea recommendation (toxicity) and to develop training programs for its correct use on farms.
But, in my opinion, all is down to the cost of the supplementation. Perhaps, for those small farmers feeding straw is the only way to made cattle survive scarcity periods.
colleague
agree with Dr Laporte answer. I just add that straw can be improve in digestibility using chemical tratments, as urea ammonification.
best regards,
Redimio
Added to what Dr. Jose Laporte has suggested, please explore the possibility of preparing hay in advance at proper stage. Greens are being wasted due to lack of awareness regarding strategies to ensure roughages throughout the year.
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