Water quality appears to be of great importance and minerals dissolved in the drinking water, often very variable, impact water acceptability and animal performance.
In order to evaluate minerals supplied by mineral content of drinking water, first step is to characterize the water source being fed to the cows.
Through the Feeds section, the user can insert a water analysis properly classifying the sample as Drinking Water. In this way, the platform will allow the data entry of the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), which is basically a measure of the soluble, non organic constituents, and of all dissolved minerals found in water.
Now, by simply including the water sample in one recipe, even without ascribing any amount, the NDS Water Sub-model will automatically run, working with the drinking water intake predicted.
In the recipe screen, the Water tab shows the contribution of drinking water to the mineral needs of cow, both in terms of supply and as % of the requirements.
Mineral supplied by water are added to the mineral supplied by diet so we can get the total intake, concentration and comparisons with mineral requirements.
The Minerals tab shows all the details about that.
