Innovative technology and equipment for calves rearing during preweaning period

Abstract

High dairy performance of adult animals is directly dependent on the conditions of calves growing and feeding during the preweaning period. Since cattle has a low so-called “critical temperature”, it is advisable to use this property of the body when rearing calves in the open air year-round in individual houses. It is known that among the entire complex of factors affecting the intensive growth of calves, the quality of food and the method of calves feeding in the first periods of postembryonic development of young animals from birth to 12 months deserve the most attention. In order to reduce consumption of whole milk for feeding calves and accelerate development of digestive tract in calves in early life period with high body weight gains, in practice specialists try to achieve it by introducing plant foods into diets for calves. However, plant feeds, even high-energy ones (cereals and legumes), containing large amount of protein, carbohydrates, starch, etc., are digested by calves very slowly and in small quantities. It is shown that to eliminate these drawbacks it is advisable to extrude all the plant feeds. The paper describes in detail the technology and equipment for preparing easily digestible feeds based on legumes for calves feeding during preweaning period, allowing to accelerate the development of digestive tract in the early life period of calves with high body weight gains, reduce consumption of whole milk or its replacers and energy costs for its production. Studies on the effect of feeding young cattle with feed concentrate during preweaning period showed increase in performance by 6.6 % and a decrease in feed costs by 5.73 %.