A Goal Programming Approach to Ration Formulation Problem for Indian Dairy Cows

All congratulations to authors for this beautiful article and easy to understand by any progressive farmer. As a progressive livestock farmer and having long life experience of animal production in 3 continents, I agree with conclusion given in this article. Please keep it up.

Thank you, Sir. Looking forward to work with untouched field in animal nutrition. Please suggest if any.

Sustainable feed formulation prepared from crop residues is the main target. Such formulations are cheaper and it helps to utilize crops residues in most efficient ways. In the article, experiments are based on residues available in a specific area of India while many more useful crop residues are also available and cheaply available in other areas of India as well as in the world. In Pakistan, corn cob is easily and cheaply available in Punjab Pakistan. I use the same as Corn cob meal where I use corn cob 30% while remaining 70% ingredients help in making the concentrate as balanced diet required full nutritional profile required for the animals.

Yes, sir, you are right but corn cub is not available everywhere in India, I check once... Thanks for suggestions.

Good Study on the linear program for ration formulation. Yes, it is the basic approach for right calculation as per the mathematical model, Appreciate efforts from Liner Programming point of view.

From practical aspect, few queries for clarity on the mentioned subject,

1. Selection of the late lactating animals ( Span 6-9 months), for higher intake of the Dry Matter, for 10 Ltr. milk DM ( Range 16-17 Kg).
2. The targeted CP in rage of 10 %? and TND @ 51 %, are we targeting too low from nutrient point of view especially if we consider it for Steamers in 8-9 months?
3. Qualification of 6 out of 7 parameters, which have Ca and P also in consideration, may not lead to the right conclusion for practical adoption of the suggested concept.

I trust, it is important to look into the parameters like MP, NE and DCAD for final month i.e. 9 months and its spill over in the fresh period. Further, it may give good idea if Fresh and Early lactation animals are put in the consideration to extend this study beyond Dry Period. This will certainly beneficial for the average Dairy Farmer in South Asia to look at the possible solution when forage is limited and compound is relatively expensive.

Best Regards,

A very good experiment. It is also available here in Nigeria.

Using byproducts as a portion is fine but feeding best available ingredients will always yield best performance milk is only one of the aspects you feed for animal well being and additional lactation will only come from quality diets you can't get them bred.