Physical and Chemical Properties of Complete Feed Blocks Prepared from Pasture Grass Hay of Dry Temperate Zone of Himachal Pradesh

Complete feed blocks were prepared by using pasture grass hay and concentrate mixture in the ratio of 100: 0 (T₁), 80: 20 (T₂), 75: 25 (T₂), 70: 30 (T₄), 60: 40 (T₅) and 50: 50 (T₆). Ten blocks were prepared for each treatment by taking total weight of 3 kg of hay and concentrate feed at 3000 psi pressure. The chemical composition and various physical parameters viz., bulk density, relative hardness and post compression expansion were studied. The increase in bulk density was observed upto 5.69 - 7.89 times due to compressing premix into complete feed block depending on the proportion of concentrates in the premix. The penetrability decreased linearly with increasing percentage of concentrates in the particular treatment. T₁ blocks showed maximum post compression expansion (9.90%) after 16 weeks of storage whereas T₆ had the lowest (5.95%). The post compression expansion was found to be negligible after 2h of the block preparation. Hence, complete feed blocks prepared by using different ratio of hay and concentrates at 3000 psi pressure can be stored up to 16 weeks without significant effect on block dimensions.