The scientific use of feed additives can effectively increase the output of ruminant products, improve feed utilization, save feed, reduce costs, and achieve the purpose of increasing production and income. The use of feed additives has low investment and high returns. It is a practical technology and successful experience in developing ruminant breeding and deserves to be vigorously promoted and applied.

Today I will introduce to you the types of ruminant additives and the functions of common ruminant feed additives.

1. Yeast culture and microbial preparations

      The use of yeast culture as a feed additive was first used as a protein supplementary feed for ruminants, playing dual roles of nutrition and health care. Its nutritional function is mainly to optimize the nutritional value of feed , improve feed palatability , maintain stable feed intake , improve digestibility , and enable animals to absorb more nutrients to promote production performance.

      The reason why yeast culture has a significant milk-increasing effect on dairy cows is that the metabolites of yeast can promote ruminal fermentation, causing ammonia bacteria, protein-synthesizing bacteria, and fiber bacteria to multiply and grow in large numbers, thereby improving the digestion of feed crude fiber. rate and the efficiency of bacteria using NPN ( non-protein nitrogen ) to synthesize bacterial protein.

      Adding a certain amount of microecological preparations to the diet of ruminants can not only promote the production of various digestive enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract and improve the feed conversion rate ; balance the microecological flora of the gastrointestinal tract , prevent the invasion of pathogenic bacteria , and also reduce the risk of Ammonia odor of animal manure , improve and optimize the ecological environment of animal feeding , and reduce environmental pollution.

2. Enzyme preparations for ruminants

      The application of enzyme preparations in ruminants is limited by many problems. It is certain that enzyme preparations are effective when used in ruminants. As most ruminant feeds contain cellulases and hemicellulases, these enzymes vary widely between commercial enzyme products, depending on the source organism and how the organism was grown.

      It is imperative to promote the construction of a technical system for the application of ruminant enzyme products . The use of ruminant exogenous enzymes involves six key technical points :

1. The synergistic effect of exogenous enzymes and rumen microbial enzymes;

2. The relationship between exogenous enzymes, microbial enzymes and host digestive enzymes;

3. Give full consideration to rumination behavior;

4. The application mode of exogenous enzymes should be segmented before and after the rumen function is established;

5. Try to avoid causing metabolic dysfunction in the digestive tract of ruminants ;

6. Study the application of combination enzymes and complex enzymes.

3. Rumen-passing amino acids (lysine, methionine and guanidinoacetic acid)

      As an important limiting amino acid for ruminants, methionine plays a huge role in fully unleashing animal production potential, alleviating the shortage of protein feed resources, reducing fecal and urinary nitrogen emissions, and protecting the environment.

      Due to the special digestive and metabolic pathways of ruminants, directly adding crystalline methionine will be rapidly degraded by rumen microorganisms (protozoa, bacteria and fungi) and lose its significant biological efficacy. Therefore, rumen protective methionine has increasingly become a hot spot and focus of research.

      The first is to conduct in-depth research on the metabolic pathways and mechanisms of methionine in animals, and to further understand the mechanism of methionine on ruminant nutrition, production, immunity, etc.;

      The second is to further optimize the methionine rumen passage technology to facilitate large-scale promotion and application , and to explore coating methods for other limiting amino acids, vitamins and small peptide products based on this ;

      The third is to fully study the synergistic effect , and determine their appropriate addition amount and proportion to achieve the best use effect ;

The fourth is to actively carry out the application of low-protein diets for ruminants with the research on rumen-passing amino acids as       the core .

       In vivo , the comprehensive functions of lysine utilized by ruminants include : maintenance , growth ( lactating heifers or primiparous cows ) reproduction , lactation and milk protein synthesis.

      With rumen-protected lysine products, it is now possible to increase the supply of lysine in a more targeted or purposeful manner.

      Guanidinoacetic acid is an amino acid, amino acid salt and its analogues, and a creatine precursor. Guanidinoacetic acid can promote muscle growth and development by synthesizing creatine, sparing arginine and activating the m-TOR pathway.

4.Rumen-protected choline
     

      Choline chloride can prevent peripartum ketosis and fatty liver in dairy cows by regulating body fat metabolism. At the same time, choline chloride can also be used as a methyl donor, replacing methionine to provide methyl groups for transamination in the body, making methionine more Mostly used for milk production.

      Choline chloride is highly hygroscopic, which also brings certain difficulties to the processing of microencapsulation. In the past few years, ruminal choline chloride was mainly imported, but it was expensive. In recent years, with the domestic reform With the continuous advancement of rumen protection technology, both rumen passage rate and small intestinal release rate can achieve very ideal results.

5. Rumen-passed multivitamins

Vitamins are one of the important nutrients       that ruminants need for rumen protection . The rumen has a great destructive effect on multivitamins, and the comprehensive rate of various vitamins passing through the rumen is extremely low. Therefore, it is not scientific to use vitamins used in pigs and poultry on ruminants.

      The traditional view is that rumen microorganisms can synthesize sufficient amounts of B vitamins for use by dairy cattle and beef cattle. However, with the improvement of the production performance of beef cattle and dairy cattle, the B vitamins synthesized by rumen microorganisms can no longer meet production needs .

      In particular, deficiencies of pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, biotin, and folic acid can limit the performance of dairy and beef cattle, causing hoof disease and mastitis.

6. Rumen fat

      Rumen-passed fat powder is an energy source that does not affect rumen fermentation and is easily digested, absorbed, and utilized by the post-ruminal digestive system. Rumen- passing fat powder is not easily decomposed , can pass through the rumen without affecting the rumen microbial flora, and is eventually absorbed in the small intestine.

Characteristics of ideal rumen bypass fat powder:

①High total energy content;

②To ensure high digestibility of added fat powder, it should usually contain more than 80% free fatty acids;

③ Too high or too low saturation of fatty acids is detrimental to fat digestibility. The ideal iodine value is between 6 and 15;

④Rumen fat should not affect the palatability of the feed;

⑤Easy to store, not easy to deteriorate, easy to operate and transport, non-corrosive, no adverse effects on feed.

7. Anionic salt products

      Elements such as sulfur, phosphorus, and chlorine in the feed enter the body and become acidic bases such as sulfate, phosphate, and hydrochloride respectively ; sodium and potassium respectively become their cationic bases. When the total equivalent of bases in the body is more than the total equivalent of acidic groups , the body fluid is alkaline, and vice versa. Whether a diet is alkaline or acidic is largely determined by the difference in cation and anion equivalents .

      Anionic salts have a good effect on reducing the occurrence of postpartum diseases. In dairy herds with a high incidence of metabolic diseases , feeding anionic salts is the primary preventive measure to reduce puerperal fever, ketosis, retained placenta, and displaced abomasum.

      Feeding anionic salts can significantly improve the reproductive performance, significantly increase the pregnancy rate, shorten the pregnancy period, and extend the service life; it can avoid subacute hypocalcemia , thereby increasing milk production by . In addition, feeding anionic salts can also increase the milk fat rate, reduce the number of somatic cells, and improve the quality of dairy products.

8. Ammonium chloride

      Feed grade ammonium chloride has two main applications in livestock production. On the one hand, it can be used as a non-protein nitrogen feed additive for ruminants, replacing part of the biological protein in the feed; on the other hand, it can also be used as an acidity regulator feed additive to acidify body fluids and urine, and is effective against phosphate urinary stones. Very good preventive and therapeutic effects.

      However, the most commonly used non-protein chlorine feeds in ruminant production are urea and its derivatives, and there are relatively few studies on ammonium salt feeds.

9. Urea non-protein ammonia

      Urea is a non-protein, simple nitrogenous compound that can replace part of the protein feed and reduce feed costs. Urea also has shortcomings and deficiencies in feeding, such as bad taste and urea poisoning caused by excessive use. The ammonia-alkali smell of urea can be eliminated through processes such as corn gelatinization and the combination of urea and coagulant, and can be released slowly, thereby reducing the phenomenon of urea poisoning. Such as expanded urea, sustained-release urea, corn starch gelatinized urea, etc.

10. Feed attractants

      Food attractants include but are not limited to green agents, sweeteners, fruity agents, herbal agents, orexins, etc., which simulate the flavors and colors that ruminants may like, thereby stimulating the sense of smell , vision, taste organs or directly stimulating neuroendocrine The regulatory center promotes the secretion of digestive juices and gastrointestinal motility, generates appetite, and promotes feeding behavior.

      Studies have shown that adding honey, fresh grass and sweeteners can increase the feed intake of steers; adding fruity and herbal flavoring agents not only increases the milk production of dairy cows, but also improves the flavor of the milk.

11. Natural plant extracts

      Chemical substances such as volatile oils, saponins, alkaloids, and terpenes in plant extracts have antibacterial, growth-promoting, immunity-improving, and antioxidant functions.

      In recent years, studies have found that plant extracts can also regulate the rumen fermentation mode of ruminants, improve nitrogen retention, and reduce methane emissions. Therefore, plant extracts have been widely studied and applied as an important additive for regulating rumen fermentation in ruminants.