Small-sized feed dispenser with optimal parameters for small farms

Abstract

Relevance. The development of large-scale agricultural production is focused on powerful large-sized machinery using. Over the past decades, a lot of small profitable farms have been created in Russia – farms and personal subsidiary farms, where owner is a direct products’ manufacturer, using small and narrow-sized equipment, for example compact mixers and feed dispenser mixers – MK-3G(5G) mini. This new generation “smart” mini-equipment for small cattle fattening’s farms supports the animal breeding technologies adopted in production, and also has such useful properties as accuracy, maneuverability, compactness, successfully replaces various manual and semi-automatic labor items.Methods. The study was conducted on farms whose fattening livestock is a multiple of 50 heads of cattle: 100, 150, 200, 250. In accordance with the rations of intensive fattening of young animals of 12–14 months age for meat purposes, its daily ration contained 25–30 kg of feed, which included high-quality hay, silage, haylage, dry grain, root-tubers. Feed was fed to animals kept on pastures under sheds, 6–8 times a day, which is every 2–2,5 hours during the light day, with a break at night for rest and sleep.Results. A small feed dispenser Nifty Livestock Feed Dispenser E3592, made in various forms of a bunker: trailer, semi-trailer-body or optional trailer-station, allows by one person to ensure the distribution of feed for 250 or more heads of cattle due to the volume of the capacity of a round bunker for 1480 kg, which with a slight increase in the volume of the bunker is consistent with the volume of daily and single portions of various types of feed for a farmer’s herd on fattening in the Russian Federation, and with bunker volume increased by 15,5% – for feed mixtures in full.