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[In this post, Darryl Gibb explains how to include ingredients which are formulated based on quantity rather than concentration in a ration formulation within Fusion. Darryl has previously written an article titled "Switching to Dry Matter Based Feeding" and another titled "Fusion Feeding Protocols" which are also very useful.]
When a load of feed is made, all included ingredients make up a percentage of the total load. Yet some ingredients are specified to be added at a certain quantity (i.e. grams/head/day) instead of a concentration (i.e. a percentage). For example, MGA is cleared to be fed at 0.4 mg/head/day. Or, in another example, you may want to feed 1 gram of chlortetracycline (CTC) per head per day.
These values are easy for us to understand, but impossible to deliver. We feed pens of cattle, not individuals, so we really can’t deliver 1 gram of CTC to each animal. The best we can do is include the desired quantity in the average intake of the pen or ration. We also need to convert the 1 gram of CTC to the quantity of product being used.
Let’s assume you are using Chlor 100 which is 22% CTC, so you actually need to feed 1 ÷ 0.22 = 4.5 g of Chlor 100. If average dry matter intake is 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms), then you need to include 4.5 g of Chlor 100 ÷ 6.8 kg, or 0.066% Chlor 100 on a dry matter basis.
If the feeding rate of a pure product (i.e. yeast) specifies to feed x g/hd/d, then the concentration is simply x ÷ average intake. Remember to make the proper conversions so x and average intakes are in the same units.
Here is a spreadsheet which you can use to convert quantity based ingredients to a concentration basis: Quantity To Concentration.xlsx.
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