Manipulating dairy cow diets influences yield, milk composition and animal welfare, while impacting farm economics by relating to feed – the major cost in ruminant systems.
Scientists have been conducting extensive research into ruminant nutrition, greatly improving the sector’s understanding of the processes involved in converting feed into milk.
However, for many years the industry lacked a framework to join this knowledge together, hence the contribution of research to milk production sustainability was limited.
Through close collaboration with the dairy industry, Feed into Milk aimed to address this. This was so producers had a nutritional model to apply on farms and inform advisors.
The manual explains the background and principles involved in deriving the model, giving a rationale of the equations used for predicting feed intake and energy and protein supply.
Feed into Milk also supports the decision making process to assist in building dairy cow rations.