Development of Feed Plant for Ruminant Livestock

Livestock business in Nigeria is being challenged by problems such as high cost of feedstuff, farmers-herders clashes, drying up of Lake Chad basin, inadequate utilization of agro-wastes for feed, desert encroachment, urbanization, population growth, inconsistencies and poor implementation of government policies. Ministry of livestock development was recently created by Federal Government of Nigeria to tackle farmers–herders clashes and develop the livestock sector. Some of the core mandates of the ministry are development and maintenance of livestock infrastructure to support sustainable growth. Towards developing the livestock sector, this project is aimed at developing a feed plant for production of balanced feed ration for ruminant livestock in ranches and grazing reserves. The feed plant developed consists of a multi-purpose cutting machine, a pneumatic conveyor chute and a horizontal mixer. Geometric modeling of the parts of the feed plant was done with Pro/Engineer® software. Theoretical design calculations led to the selection of 2.24 kW high speed three phase motor and 0.75 kW low speed gear motor as prime movers for the multipurpose cutter and horizontal mixer, respectively.  Materials for the fabrication of the plant were sourced locally, while fabrication methods used include cutting, welding, drilling, turning, boring and grinding. Performance evaluation of the cutter and feed plant yielded 140 kg/hr and 30 kg/hr as their throughput capacities, respectively; cutting efficiency of the cutter was 94.44 %. Velocities of air that blew the chopped straws into the mixer were measured with an anemometer as 37.02 m/s at the exit of the blower and 5.46 m/s at the exit of the cyclone. This implies that the velocity of air decreases with distance. The use of this feed plant will shore-up productivity of ranches and grazing reserves and reduce farmers-herders clashes.