Help » Ration planning » Page „Assistant“ in fodjan Pro

Page „Assistant“ in fodjan Pro

Required: fodjan Pro | User rights: write, owner or admin.

The assistant in fodjan Pro is a good start for all those who want to venture into ration optimisation with fodjan. The assistant supports you in redesigning or adapting rations for existing or new feed groups. In addition, the wizard suggests optimised rations according to your goals, e.g. to save feed costs or to increase feed health.

In the left menu, go to Assistant. This will take you to the fodjan Pro assistant.

Step 1: Create or select a feed group

Follow the instructions of the wizard. In the first step you can select an existing feed group or create a new feed group and enter the master data. More on feed group settings here.

Once you have created or selected a feed group, click on “Save and enter ration” or “Continue to ration”.

Step 2: Enter or select ration

You can now enter a ration manually or select an existing ration via the dropdown similar to the feed group.

Note: The rations are only listed here with costs and feeding start or creation date. Comments or descriptions are not displayed. The 5 newest rations with feeding start date and the 5 newest created rations (no feeding start date) are displayed.

You can add new feeds via the button “Add feedstuff”.

Our recommendation: It is advisable that you only use feedstuffs here that are also in your herd, more on this here. However, when you enter a feed, feeds from the feed database that are not in your stock will also be displayed. You can recognise these by the following symbol:

Enter the price in €/ t FM for these. The feed will then be added to your stock.

Then click on “Save and evaluate” or “Continue to evaluation”.

Step 3: Evaluate the ration

The evaluation of the ration according to feed health, milk yield and economic parameters is displayed here.

Note: The milk yield given here is the calculated milk yield from the ration. It does not come from the feed group settings, the documentation or similar.

If you select the button “Improve ration”, you can display ration suggestions.

Step 4: Ration suggestions

Ration suggestions are now displayed. You have the following optimisation options:

  • Healthier: Here the feed health rating is improved.
  • Nitrogen-reduced (dairy cow only): The animals can only metabolise as much protein as they have energy available, the rest of the protein is excreted. The ration proposal “nitrogen reduced” tries to reduce protein excretion by lowering the RNB and reducing the protein surplus in the milk.
  • More milk (only for lactating dairy cows): When selecting this ration suggestion, a ration with higher calculated milk yield is suggested.
  • Cheaper: Here a ration with higher IOFC is suggested to you, which also has a lower cost per kg milk. For dry stallers, pigs and beef cattle, a ration with lower costs is suggested here.
  • Healthier & Cheaper: Combination of “Healthier” and “Cheaper”
  • Under “Individual” you can access the ration catalogue and filter ration suggestions according to your goals and requirements and select and save a suitable ration (more on this below).

With these optimisation options of the wizard, you will see how the ration suggestion changes feed health score, milk yield (for dairy cow), costs and IOFC (for dairy cow).

Note: The assistants ration suggestions focus on a marginal change for your animals to make a feeding change as smooth as possible. For example, the ration suggestions never deviate more than 10% from the current basic feed amounts in your ration and the TM intake level is also kept relatively constant. For larger or more individual adjustments, the ration catalogue is used instead.

Once you have decided on a suggestion, go there to the button “Select ration”.

Step 5: Improved ration

After selecting the desired suggestion, you will get to the ration. Go to the bottom right and click on “Save” to save the ration. You can now save the ration with or without a feeding start.

Note: You can also add a description to the ration in this step, more about this here.

The created or optimised ration is now in your feed group.

Once you have created or selected your ration, the following message may appear in the next step: Deviations from the current feed model

This message indicates that one or more requirements from the feed group are not met by the ration, you can read more about feed group settings here.

If you click on the red “Show deviations” the following view opens:

At the top with the red numbers you will see the deviations of the ingredients in the ration from the current feed model or from the feed group requirements you set yourself. At the bottom with the black numbers you can see which master data of the feed group will be adjusted if you use the assistant.

If you want to apply the changes as suggested, click on the button “Automatically adjust feed group and improve ration” at the bottom right. Then go to step 4.

Note: The suggested changes will be applied to your feed group settings. The deviations from the nutrients are not adjusted in the feed group settings.

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See also


Ration optimisation with fodjan – Overview
Read more >

Basic settings for ration optimisation
Read more >

Ration catalogue: Have alternative feeds suggested
Read more >

Ration catalogue: What to do if no ration suggestions are displayed?
Read more >

New calculation – ration catalogue in fodjan Pro
Read more >

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