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Paper short abstract

On-farm Feed Advisor, a digital application helps dairy farmers to formulate balanced rations using locally available feed resources, thereby reducing feed costs while ensuring adequate nutrient supply to their animals.

Paper long abstract

In the mixed farming system, farmers generally feed their livestock with available crop residues such as straw, stover, haulms, and other agricultural by-products. This basal feed is later supplemented with home-grown or purchased forage and concentrates, although with minimal understanding of the feed composition and actual nutrient requirements of the animal and prices associated with purchased nutrient supplements. This may, in many cases, result in over or under supply of key nutrients such as protein or energy relative to the level of production, and therefore increase feeding costs.

The ‘On-farm Feed Advisor’ mobile application, downloadable from Google Playstore or Appstore utilizes two databases: (i) nutritional requirements of animals (as per Indian Council of Agricultural Research recommendation) embedded in the backend of the application, (ii) nutritional quality of feeds (estimated through Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS)/wet chemistry analysis protocols at ILRI), along with feed prices with a user edit option. The user is required to input farm data such as type of animal , body weight, type of feed, quantity fed, milk production, quality and milk price. From the above data, the app automatically it balances nutrients and generates feed advice to formulate a least cost diet using locally available feed resources

On-farm Feed Advisor serves as a practical tool to guide farmers in preparing balanced rations with locally available feeds. It helps to reduce feeding costs, improve nutrient efficiency, and enhance animal productivity. Ultimately, it contributes to sustainable livestock production, better farm profitability, and improved livelihoods for farmers.