Whole Sugarcane: Feeding Strategy

The most important entity of any dairy farm is its cattle. It is best for the farmers and their dairy farms if the cattle are happy, healthy, and yielding in large quantities. To make it happen, farmers try many fodders and feeding strategies, with some excellent producing results and others producing poor outcomes. Sugarcane is one such plant, which, if appropriately fed to ruminants, can give you excellent yields. You can provide whole sugarcane in many forms. This article will discuss all of them.

Nutritional value of sugarcane

Here are some facts and figures to understand the nutritional value of sugarcane.

• Usually, sugarcane is low in crude protein and high in fiber.
• Generally, it is seen as low-quality fodder. However, it is high in Dry Matter (DM) digestibility and Organic Matter (OM) digestibility.
• Overall, it is a good ruminant feed.

How to feed sugarcane to your ruminants?

Now that you know the nutritional value of sugarcane, you also need to understand how to feed it properly so that your dairy cattle can get the most benefits out of it and there are no side effects whatsoever.

• As a farmer, you need to balance the feed with sugarcane, so there are no adverse effects.
• Supplementing protein, minerals, and vitamins with sugarcane intake to support rumen microflora is a good strategy.

Please note: Sugarcane inclusion should not be over 40 to 45 percent of your ruminants’ diets. At this level, you can apply protein supplements via soybean meal and low-level urea (10 g per KG DM), soybean food and high-level urea (17 g per KG DM), raw soybean, or corn gluten meal.

Feeding sugarcane as sugarcane silage

You can also ensile and preserve sugarcane as silage. However, because of its high proportion of soluble sugars, silage becomes alcoholic and loses its nutritional value. However, you can prevent this with the following method.

• Ensile the crop as soon as it is chopped.
• Avoid longer wilting periods.
• Baling and wrapping in plastic sheets are also recommended.

Feeding sugarcane as dried sugarcane

You can also sun-dry or open-dry chopped sugarcane. You can do sun-drying by spreading the chopped plant on a thin layered plastic sheet (up to 4 cm). Now, allow it to dry during the daytime under the sun and mix 2 to 3 times. Now you need to keep it in a shed overnight. You can also try open-drying, but please note that the risk of ants is high with this method.

The final verdict: Overall, you can feed sugarcane to moderately producing dairy cows (up to 15 KG milk daily) in a situation where conventional fodder is unavailable. However, you can provide sugarcane regularly if it is supplemented with other nutrients.

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If they follow the path of good management, it is so far the farmers that they will be better off balancing their rations and improving their agricultural operations.