Improve Milk Production with a Balanced Diet

• Agrosavia tells you how to properly balance your cows’ diet in a simple way

The challenge for a good dairy farmer is to produce more and better-quality milk while keeping cows in good condition. This can be said in a simple phrase, but achieving it is not easy. One of the key elements to reach this goal is to properly balance cattle rations to ensure animal health and welfare, optimize production, reduce costs, and increase farm profitability.

Well-balanced diets in cattle production also have very positive effects on the environment by reducing nutrient excretion into the soil. In short, a balanced diet can help increase the sustainability of a dairy farm from the pillars of productivity, environment, and socioeconomic components.

Farmers have always been advised to seek the guidance of an animal nutrition specialist to determine the specific nutritional needs of cattle and develop a balanced diet adapted to those needs. On this occasion, Agrosavia researchers want to make this task easier for producers, as well as for professionals, livestock technicians, and students interested in learning this technique, by sharing knowledge on managing feeding systems through the use of ration-balancing software.

It is important to note that a well-planned ration must include ingredients that provide nutrients at the lowest cost, and it should be adjusted periodically according to variations in forage supply and the dynamics of animal production.

In this context, the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation, Agrosavia, created a program that helps farmers make decisions regarding feed components. You simply provide the information required by the software, and it generates recommendations on how to manage cattle nutrition. The software, called DieTro®, is designed for balancing rations for dairy cattle, particularly in cold-climate systems. This technology was developed at Agrosavia’s Tibaitatá Research Center.

However, the goal of Agrosavia researchers is for interested participants to learn how to use the program properly. For this reason, they designed an online course that will take place from September 1 to November 15, 2025, with a total duration of 40 hours. The objective is to provide participants with tools, techniques, and practices to optimize dairy cattle feeding in cold-climate production systems using the DieTro® software.

The course is based on a common diagnosis in Colombia’s cold-climate dairy sector: the high cost of milk production, mainly associated with feed supplementation, which often results from inadequate supply of feed in both quantity and quality, negatively affecting the competitiveness of this value chain.

Through the course modules, participants will learn to identify feed resources with high productive potential, calculate production costs of forage crops, and formulate low-cost rations where local forage resources are prioritized according to animals’ nutritional demands—all supported by the linear programming integrated into the DieTro® software.

The course content begins with basic knowledge of animal nutrition and feeding, followed by a practical approach to solving feeding-related problems. Participants will develop skills in ration formulation by practicing directly with DieTro®’s interface. This software also allows users to create and manage ingredients from AlimenTro® (another Agrosavia tool), estimate nutritional requirements, and compare ration-balancing scenarios as decision-making support.

Participation in the course is free of charge, and the software is also available for free through Agrosavia’s website. By the end of the course, participants are expected to be able to generate positive impacts on production systems by reducing costs and increasing income, while also gaining tools to make dairy farming more sustainable.

👉 If you would like to participate, register here:
https://www.agrosavia.co/umbraco/surface/eventos/preinscripcion?idEven=18746