Design and development of nutrient requirement calculator for dairy cattle feed formulation

Author: 
Vishal Patil., Radha Gupta., Rajendran D and Ravinder Singh Kuntal

Linear programming (LP) is one amongst the models that is in use effectively since many years for least cost feed formulation. Newer techniques are available for solving mathematical problem, where the success rate is found to be varying. Hence an attempt was made to develop farmer friendly “Nutrient Requirement Calculator” in VB.NET for dairy cattletocalculate nutrient requirement with appropriate coding.This study involved in three phases: First Design and development of a “Nutrient Requirement Calculator”, secondly development of Linear mathematical model to optimize feed cost using three different techniques such as Random Search Technique (RST), MATLAB and LP in Excel and third translation of results into simpler farmer friendly terms to execute at farm. Result shows that there is no significance difference exists between the methods (P > 0.05) therefore this calculator can be used to calculate the nutrient requirement of cattle’s as per NRC 2001 standards.

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DOI: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2018.9278.1527
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Volume7