Get to know your livestock's nutritional requirements

If you understand the essential nutrients that your cattle need, and how to provide these, you will end up with a profitable livestock business, says Shane Brody. Here's how to ensure that the animals get enough to thrive.

- Shane Brody

Many communal farming areas in which I run farming projects show signs of veld degradation. This is mainly due to poor grazing management, but the problem has been compounded by changing weather patterns. Without good grazing planning, communal farmers are either forced to buy more additional feed every year, or reduce livestock numbers. Both of these strategies reduce profits and eventually make farming unsustainable.

Cattle require certain quantities of roughage, protein, trace elements, vitamins, water, and energy in their diets. If these are out of balance, you will struggle to raise profitable livestock. Different ages and even types of cattle have greatly differing nutritional needs and require different quantities of feed.

PROTEIN

It is also important to know about the protein content of grasses and other feed plants such as lucerne. This varies greatly according to the season, type of grass, and so forth.

Simply put, in many communal farming areas, when grass plants become dry and dormant in winter, their protein content and thus their nutritional value declines.