What is total mixed ration in terms of animal husbandry?

Answer 1

The term total mixed ration may be defined as, "the practice of weighing and blending all feedstuffs into a complete ration which provides adequate nourishment to meet the needs of dairy cows." Each bite consumed contains the required level of nutrients (energy, protein, minerals and vitamins) needed by the cow.

Advantages

The dairy farmer has more control over the feeding program.

All forages, grains, protein supplements, minerals and vitamins are thoroughly mixed. Therefore, the cow can do very little sorting for individual ration ingredients.

Completely blended feeds, coupled with grouping the cows, permits greater flexibility in feeding exact amounts of nutrients (energy, protein, etc.) to more accurately feed cows for their particular stage of lactation and level of milk yield.

Grain mixtures can be liberally fed to grouped high producers without overfeeding the late-lactation or lower-producing cows, resulting in more efficient use of feeds.

Disadvantages

Cows should be grouped by production levels.

Grouping cows is not feasible in small herds (less than 50 cows).

If not grouped according to production, cows in late lactation are likely to get too fat.

Special equipment is needed.

The equipment must have the capability to thoroughly blend the feed ingredients.

The mixer-wagon, preferably mobile, must be capable of accurately weighing each ingredient.

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