Smart Cattle Feeding Machine for Current Agricultural Scenario

Abstract

Cattle feeding practices are very traditional in India and most of the feed comes from grazing. Over the generations, due to shortage of feed, there has been a gradual shift from traditional feed pattern to compounded feeding. Compound feed for livestock is either in the form of mash, feed block, or feed pellets. The feed pelleting machines available in the market are expensive and unaffordable for livestock farmers. If small-scale animal husbandries have access to a pellet mill technology that is low cost yet dependable, then it reduces the dependency on the high-cost commercial feeds available in the market and saves them such avoidable costs. The pellet making machine makes pellets full of nutrients for the animals. Mostly the compound feed is produced in industrial level in India and to overcome this, a machine has been made by us to provide raw material for small-scale pellet production. Our target has been to create a chaff cutter which can be purchased by animal husbandries at an absolutely affordable rate. The chaff cutter being designed by us will help in powdering the agricultural by-products that can be baked into pellets to feed livestock or can be used as raw material for the pellet mills. In future, we target to design a pellet mill that can be integrated with our machine and the integrated machine will facilitate in-house production of pellets and that machine will be at least three to four times more affordable for small-scale farmers than existing pellet mills. We have given base extension in our current chaff cutter for this intended future integration.