Publication Date
1989
Description
The nutritional requirement of any dairy herd varies along the year according mainly with the liveweight and the physiological stages of the animals. Similarily the grasslands and forage crops have specific and characteristic seasonal behaviour, both in terms of growth rate and nutritional quality. This situation is very dynamic and may become difficult to handle when several alternatives of forage species have to be combined in order to meet the animal requirements. In the humid temperate regions in Chile, most of the forage production in permanent grasslands occurs in spring because of the extreme drought during summer and low temperature-high rainfall during winter. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult to undertake a dairy operation based solely on those grasslands, and alternative forage sources are required for proper feeding the dairy animals all along the year. There are a number of complementary forages that have been investigated in order to overcome most of the seasonal forage deficits (Pichard et al., 1986; Wheeler, 1981). The challenge is then to find the most appropriate combination of forage sources, and to provide the farmer with information about what forage species to establish, the quantity to be produced, to be conserved and to be allocated every month to the animals. This paper is addressed to solving this problem by means of a dynamic model that considers the continuous changes along the year of the animal requirements and of the growth and nutritional characteristics of well adapted plant species. In this work the objective function was set as the least cost combination of forage alternatives that supplies the dairy herd nutrient requirements in every month of the year.
Citation
Pichard, G; Ortega, J; and Cussen, R, "Planning Seasonal Forage Strategies in Dairy Farms a Linear Programming Approach" (2025). IGC Proceedings (1989-2023). 16.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/1989/session11/16
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Planning Seasonal Forage Strategies in Dairy Farms a Linear Programming Approach
The nutritional requirement of any dairy herd varies along the year according mainly with the liveweight and the physiological stages of the animals. Similarily the grasslands and forage crops have specific and characteristic seasonal behaviour, both in terms of growth rate and nutritional quality. This situation is very dynamic and may become difficult to handle when several alternatives of forage species have to be combined in order to meet the animal requirements. In the humid temperate regions in Chile, most of the forage production in permanent grasslands occurs in spring because of the extreme drought during summer and low temperature-high rainfall during winter. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult to undertake a dairy operation based solely on those grasslands, and alternative forage sources are required for proper feeding the dairy animals all along the year. There are a number of complementary forages that have been investigated in order to overcome most of the seasonal forage deficits (Pichard et al., 1986; Wheeler, 1981). The challenge is then to find the most appropriate combination of forage sources, and to provide the farmer with information about what forage species to establish, the quantity to be produced, to be conserved and to be allocated every month to the animals. This paper is addressed to solving this problem by means of a dynamic model that considers the continuous changes along the year of the animal requirements and of the growth and nutritional characteristics of well adapted plant species. In this work the objective function was set as the least cost combination of forage alternatives that supplies the dairy herd nutrient requirements in every month of the year.
