Planting from vegetative material - cgiar

3. Ensure that animals can select what they eat
Ruminants are surprisingly selective in what they eat (see
Table below). When grazing a low-quality feed resource or
eating cut feed, ruminants select the best parts (such as
young leaves) first and, if offered enough, they end up
with a better quality diet. It is important to give animals
the opportunity to select what they eat.
Animals select the best parts from the feed on offer
Feed characteristic
Average quality of feed
offered
eaten
Leaf (%)
25
93
Nitrogen (%)
1.2
2.5
Digestibility (%)
45
65
An example from dairy cows grazing tropical pastures
How do you know that you are giving your animal
enough feed?
If your animal eats all the feed you have given it,
including the poorer parts such as stems, then you
have not given it enough! To grow well animals must be
able to select the best parts of a feed.
Try this idea!
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