Feed Resources

feed reserves for livestock raising and sources for obtaining feed on a farm, in an oblast or raion, or in a country. Feed resources include fodders from natural and sown hayfields and pastures; field crops planted for hay, silage, feed grain, green and succulent feed; such threshing floor and field wastes as straw, chaff, and tops of roots and tubers; by-products of milling, vegetable-oil extraction, sugar refining, brewing, alcohol distilling, starch and molasses production, fish and meat processing and dairying; manufactured feeds such as mixed feeds and mineral feeds; and seaweed. In the USSR the creation of a good feed supply is considered essential for the successful development of collective livestock raising.

In prerevolutionary Russia, the principal source of feed was grassland, the best of which was owned by landlords. For want of pasture, the peasants had to graze their cattle on stubble, fallow fields, and meadows from which hay had been harvested. Annual and perennial grasses, root crops, and other feed crops were grown on farms belonging to landlords and kulaks. After the Great October Socialist Revolution and particularly after agriculture was collectivized, feed resources were intensively developed in accordance with plans for the development of animal husbandry. Feed resources were improved chiefly by planting more feed crops.

The amount of feed produced in kolkhozes and sovkhozes is increasing steadily. In 1966, for example, 23.7 quintals of feed units were consumed per head of cattle compared to 26.1 in 1970. The feeds obtained from plowed land, including feed grain, account for about 70 percent of the present feed resources.

Among the most important factors in the continued development of feed resources are more intensive field fodder production, ensuring the maximum amount of high-quality feed from each hectare; improvement of natural hayfields and pastures and creation of high-yielding cultivated ones by extensive irrigation; the breeding of new varieties of feed crops that are high in protein and adapted to the various natural and agricultural conditions in the country; and using better methods of making and storing feeds with minimal loss of nutrients, such as crushing grass in making hay, haylage, and grass meal, air-drying in the process of ensiling, compressing and briquetting hay, and providing good ventilation while hay is drying.

The feed reserves of foreign countries with well-developed livestock raising such as Denmark, the Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, consist chiefly of feed crops grown on plowed land and cultivated pastures. Natural pastures are important in Australia, South America, Africa, and Asia.