Substantiation of the Directions of Technological Development of Small Livestock Farms for Further Improvement of Their Efficiency
One of the tasks facing animal husbandry at present is to preserve and increase productivity and increase the herd in order to provide the domestic market with livestock products. The successful completion of this task primarily depends on the creation of a solid food base. This issue can be solved through the introduction of feed production technologies and the effective use of feed, regardless of natural conditions. The effective use of feed in animal feeding is possible only if they are well prepared and mixed with other components. The use of feed mixtures is aimed at expanding the use of vegetable residues and industrial additives, ensuring proper nutrition and digestibility of feed, increasing animal productivity by 10-26%, and reducing feed consumption per unit of production by 15-20%. The preparation, directly on the farm, of concentrated compound feeds based on industrial additives helps to solve several tasks simultaneously. It becomes possible to reduce the costs of transporting grain and finished feed to farms as raw materials to a feed mill, accounting for the feed base of the farm, balancing feed in accordance with the needs of animals. In the technological processes of preparing the feed mixture, the mixing operation plays an important role, which is manifested in the productivity of animals. However, this operation is energy-consuming, which affects the cost of the final product. It should also be noted that the available feed mixers do not always meet the zootechnical requirements, do not provide a feed mixture of the desired quality. The working process of small-sized plants for the production of concentrated feed is insufficiently studied and requires improvement in the direction of reducing energy consumption and improving the quality of finished products. As can be seen, the improvement of the mixing process of plants for the production of full-fledged concentrated compound feed in the direction of reducing energy consumption, improving the quality of feed mixtures is an important urgent problem in agriculture.