What is TMR?
The quick answer is that TMR stands for Total Mixed Ration. It’s a fancy term for what is basically cow casserole, or hot dish if you’re from across the river.
It’s a blend of many ingredients that each contain something that our animals need to stay healthy and produce milk. The ingredients are fairly simple: haylage, corn silage, a protein mix that’s mostly made from soy beans, corn or corn gluten, and a mineral and vitamin mix. We don’t just come up with the mix for our TMR on our own; we work with a dairy cattle nutritionist who carefully crafts the recipe. There are different recipes for different groups of cows, like our high-producing cows, or our cows that aren’t currently milking, and each group gets a tailored recipe for their nutritional needs.
When it’s time to make the cow casserole, each ingredient is added to our feed mixer. The mixer has a scale, so we know how much of each ingredient we’ve added. The mixer has big augers that mix everything together, and that keeps the cows from being able to pick out their favorite ingredients and leave the rest. Then we drive the mixer to each barn, and the feed is delivered. Cows are kind of messy eaters and like to spread the feed out, so multiple times a day, the feed is pushed back up to the feed area. We even have robots that do this in some of our barns.
While I sometimes call nutritionists “feed nerds,” I certainly appreciate their knowledge. Their special recipes make for happy, healthy, and productive cows.