Study On Diet Formula Optimization And Nutrient Diagnosis System Of Beef Cattle

Nutrient requirements of beef cattle is one of the important basis for design of feed formula. The growth of beef cattle needs energy, protein or amino acids, vitamins, minerals and water. Due to many factors affecting nutrient requirements of beef cattle such as genetic, physiological conditions, feeding management, expected production goals and environmental factors and so on, it is necessary to express their requirments in term of mathematical modelling. At present,the Nutrient requirements of beef cattle of National Research Council(NRC2000) released is very perfect and gained international recognition. NRC2000 includes four parts: maintenance requirements, growth requirements, pregancy requirements and lactation requirements, which provided nearly 100 parameters on nutrient requirements of beef cattle. NRC2000 models can predict not only energy, protein and DMI, but also predict the use of rumen carbohydrate and protein, amino acid supply and requirements, the microbial yield from feed carbohydrate and protein, as well as their digestion rate and flow rate. Therefore, the purpose of this study on developing diet formula optimization and nutrient diagnosis system is to facilitate the use of the prediction model offered from NRC2000 , and also provides a kind of modern tool for the beef cattle precision feeding and management.The software system includes two sub-systems that are feed formula optimization system of beef cattle and prediction and diagnosis System of Nutrient requirements of beef cattle. The completion of this software is based on Windows XP system, using the visual programming language Delphi 2009 with Microsoft Office Access 2003 database management system assited.The printing and output is realized with Qreport control of Delphi 2009, and charts production is realized with Dbchart control of Delphi 2009.Feed formula optimization System is based on linear programming (LP), and least-cost diet formulation as the goal and simple type algorithm was used to develop the formula optimization calculation module, which has intelligence analysis functions. Users can easily constrain and combine into some different parameter group from about 30 nutrient items to obtain optimal formula of different space-time state.Prediction and diagnosis system developing is based on the main nutrient predicting models and concerned parameters in NRC2000. With the help of breeds, body condition, feeding patterns, pregnancy status, expected performance goals and environmental conditions, users can predict the related parameters dynamically and roundly, which include DMI, NEm, NEg, MPm, Ca, P, Cu, Fe, VA, VD, Met, Lys and other totaled to 29 nutrient items According to dietary nutrient contens and predicted requirements, the system can compare and analyse these nutrient's surplus or lack for users to make a comprehensive diagnosis of dietary.Developed diet formula optimization and nutrients diagnosis system have friendly interface and are easy to operate and have gained further promotion by the application in some enterprices for beer cattle production.The innovations of this study is following:â‘ using mathematical modelling techniques to achieve the dynamic calculation of the nutrient requirements of beef cattle and rapid diagnosis of nutrients; andâ‘¡using linear programming, database technology and software programming technology to realize the cost of beef cattle diets minimum.