Agricultural machinery

Tender description

This tender is for an automatic feeding and intake control/recording system for dairy cows is required to support the research activities of the University of Nottingham Sutton Bonington Campus, in the area of dairy cow nutrition, health and welfare. Intake control and recording will be by means of a Roughage Intake Control (RIC) system or equivalent. This must identify an individual cow and provide or deny access to a single feed bin or set of feed bins containing experimental rations. Automatic software must record cow identity, time of each feeding visit and amount of feed consumed at each visit. The automatic feeding system will comprise an integrated set of equipment to store and dispense individual feed materials (forages and concentrate ingredients), weigh and mix feeds in correct proportions for experimental groups of cows, and deliver the feed mix to the individual RIC feed bins. Capacity of the combined feeding and intake control system will be 100 cows, each consuming up to 50 kg of mixed feed per day, in experimental groups of between 6 and 50 cows.