MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION
BACK to BASICS
Purchasing
Supplements or meals.
D
ear game ranch owner – what does your
Toyota Land Cruiser
cost? Say R500,000?
How much diesel does the tank
take? What is the fuel consumption and the power output? Most
game ranchers can answer with
a lot of accuracy.
What does your herd of sable
or buffalo or black impala cost
– say R10 million? How much
dry grass do they need per day?
How much water do they drink?
How much digestible protein,
minerals and vitamins do they
need per day?
Most farmers, managers,
and owners can’t answer these
questions.
In short – we as game ranchers – know more about our
equipment that decreases in
value daily than what we know
about our very expensive game
animals that cost us a huge sum
of money daily.
Furthermore, a lot of money
is spent on supplemental feed,
roughage (lucerne, grass hay)
and feed bowls and so forth, with
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little or no understanding of what
the products are, how to use the
specific products, and, most importantly, how to store them.
This section will give you a
number of practical hints on how
to improve production and profits by increasing growth, horn
length, and reproductive rates –
and on preventing losses resulting from poor decisions on feed
choice, storing the feed, and the
supply of feed to animals.
Supplements
Supplements are normally
in the form of pellets or meals
which can be purchased from a
reputable feed firm, or which are
mixed on the farm.
1. Supplements are designed
to give the animal what nature
can’t – at that particular time of
the year and at that particular
place:
• Dry or winter areas - protein
pellets, meals or licks.
• Wet or summer areas - phosphorous licks.
2. Supplements should not
be fed ad lib - follow intake suggestions from the feed firm. The
fibre lengths pelleted or meal
products are usually too short
for decent rumination and could
cause acidosis and other rumen
disorders if overfed.
Supplements shouldn’t exceed
1/3 of the animals’ daily dry matter intake. Large animals eat 2 to
2.5% of their live weight on a daily basis, while smaller species
eat 3 to 4% of their live weight
daily.
3. The bag-tag on a supplement is only a guideline on how
much crude protein there is in
the product (refer to the section
on proteins in the previous issue
of the WRSA magazine). It is important to note that the lower the
crude protein value – the higher
the intake!
Full feeds
1. Full or boma feeds should
never be in a pelleted form for
large herbivores, as the fibre
1. Purchase from a reputable feed firm that can guarantee
quality and consistency and that
follow strict protocols in terms of
purchasing raw materials, safety, transport and technical on the
farm back up.
2. Ensure the supplements or
meals are designed by an animal
nutritionist that has a lot of on the
farm experience with wildlife.
3. If rhino or any horse-like
animals are being fed, ensure
feed is ionophore free, as possible contamination of feed with
an ionophore (Monensin) can kill
the animals.
Ensure game pellets or meals
are made in ionophore free factory.
Roughage
The cheapest source of roughage in the dry or winter months is
natural veld – so try to stock the
farm or camp to the calculated
carrying-capacity suggestions
for the area.
If it becomes necessary to purchase roughage (e.g. lucerne,
grass, oat hay):
2. When purchasing lucerne
ask for a certificate of analysis
for crude protein, moisture, fat,
fibre, calcium, phosphorous and
ash – and, if possible, a digestibility value. Lucerne quality varies with the age of the plant at
cutting and bailing, with different
cuts, and from supplier to supplier. It is therefore critical to know
what the quality of the product is
before use.
3. Do not use any roughage
that has any visible signs of fungal growth/mouldiness.
4. Roughage like soya bean,
peanut and other legume hays
can be used as a roughage
source if the products are free
of mycotoxins (fungal toxins).
Fungus and mycotoxins are often found in the bean and peanut
pods. Use a mycotoxin binder
when using such roughages.
Raw materials used in
self-mix recipes
Self-mix recipes used as a
supplements or as boma- or
full feed, all include a combination of self-produced ingredients
and ingredients purchased at a
co-operative or feed shop.
1. Always purchase raw materials which are often used in
our self-mix recipes – like maize,
chop, sunflower oilcake, soya
oilcake, wheaten bran, and dry
brewers grains – from a reputable source and also obtain a certificate of analysis (as with the
lucerne above).
2. Ensure the recipe followed
is designed for the specific need
of the farm or specific camp and
animals. It is best to have it formulated by an animal nutritionist
with on-farm wildlife experience.
Note an ad lib recipe is not the
same as a supplement and
should not be used as such.
3. Mycotoxin binders should
be added to all self-mix recipes.
storage of feed and
feedstuffs – pellets,
meals, roughages and
other raw materials excluding silage
Note: All feed has a small inherent amount of moisture within it. If any feedstuff stands for
a long period of time, moisture
loss occurs naturally.
1. Purchase it from a reputable
source.
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109
Nutrition 101
Nutrition
101
Fireside
chat
Economics in game – rumour or truth – practical points on reducing farm risks - by Craig Shepstone
length is too short – which leads
to poor rumination, poor digestion, and possibly acidosis and
diarrhoea. The roughage component should be longer than 2.5
cm in length.
Fireside chat
MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION
THABA THOLO “Enige wildsboer wat ernstig is
oor dieregesondheid en volgehoue opbrengs
behoort EPOL te gebruik.”
MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION
1. All dry or semi-dry feed
must be stored in a well-ventilated store room or container.
Fireside chat
Nutrition 101
2. All store rooms and containers must have decent ventilation.
3. Containers used to store
feedstuffs must never be in direct
sunlight. Place the container under a roof and give the container
ventilation holes. In very humid
environments use a dehumidifier when storing dry or semi-dry
feedstuffs.
6. All store rooms and containers must be rodent, insect
and bird free.
7.
Storage of all feedstuffs
in store rooms, containers or under roof (open-air) storage areas
must be on pallets (or a similar
plan) – away from direct contact
with the ground and walls.
4. Heat can cause sweating and moisture loss. Pellets
sweating can cause a suitable
environment for fungal growth
and mycotoxin production. Over
time, the roughages dry out, and
this moisture will condense on
the roof of an unventilated container or store room. This moisture will then drip down and create an environment suitable for
fungal growth.
may lead to some form of condensation – so, when offloading,
place the bags in a well ventilated store or container.
8. Don’t store roughage and
bagged feedstuffs together in a
small room or container.
5. Pellet delivery – hot sunny
days – Pellets are normally delivered on a truck, and covered
by a water-tight tarpaulin. This
Beskikbaar by Obaro Winkels. Vir verdere inligting besoek ons webtuiste by www.epol.co.za.
110 WR 2014
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111
MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION
MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION
animal lengths between bowls.
Place the bowls in a huge block
in a chess-board fashion. Long
straight lines often don’t work
due to a dominant animal chasing others down the line.
5. Hay should not be placed
on the ground – animals tend to
lie, urinate and defecate on it.
Fireside chat
1. When purchasing any
bagged feed, please take note
of the manufacturing date. Avoid
using old feed. Keep some of
the bag tags in case a query
becomes necessary in the future. All bag tags should have a
manufacturing date and a batch
number on them – allowing full
traceability.
Nutrition 101
Nutrition
101
Fireside
chat
Purchase, use of feed,
and feedstuffs
2. All old feed must be used
prior to the new feed being used
– i.e. the first in, first out approach.
3.
Feed must be placed in
a decent feed bowl and supplemental feed must be measured
out – feed bowls and buckets are
available with demarcated lines
for certain volumes of pellets
and feed.
4. Feed bowls must be
placed far enough from each
other to prevent dominance at
a particular feed bowl. Allow 2.5
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8. If feed is changed it also
needs to be done over a fiveweek period - incorporating 1/5th
new with 1/5th old feed- until the
prescribed amount is reached.
6. Place hay in hay racks or
above the ground.
7. It is very important to adapt
animals to supplements and/or
feed; please do it over approximately 5 weeks - 1/5th the first
week, 2/5ths the second week
- until the desired intake, as prescribed, is eaten.
Water and water
supplements
2. If in doubt get the borehole water analysed for potential issues. A qualified animal
nutritionist or veterinarian with a
good background in water quality must interpret these results.
After paying for the tests and advice – follow it!
1. Fresh, clean water should
be supplied to the animals daily.
3. Water should be offered to
animals in clean square or vol-
ume-based water containers
– where it is easy to determine
the amount of water at any given
time.
4.
Different water additives
are available on the market for
use prior to capture, when animals are kept in bomas, and for
those animals kept extensively
where little or no feed supplementation occurs. These products are added at a specific
dose, to a set volume of water.
For more information
contact Craig Shepstone:
[email protected]
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