Rumen8® allows farmers and consultants to manage dairy and beef cattle diets, improving animal nutrition and production while reducing costs and enteric methane emissions. It is a software application for Microsoft Windows computers that was originally created while the developers worked with dairy research herds at the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia in the early 2000’s. Rumen8 is based on multiple published feeding standards and peer-reviewed journal articles and is updated regularly.
Rumen8 is a comprehensive ruminant nutrition tool with an emphasis on ease-of-use that sets it apart from others. This makes it ideal for creating and checking cattle diets on-farm from both a nutritional and economic perspective. It is based on metabolisable energy (ME), metabolisable protein (MP) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF), but also reports a range of other diet parameters. In addition, Rumen8 comes with a strong educational element, containing many detailed explanations of the nutritional concepts required to feed cattle successfully and profitably.
Rumen8 performs well in a wide range of production systems. It is used in pasture-based and stall-fed systems all over the world. Note, it does not apply to semi-arid extensive beef production systems. Rumen8 is available for free and is used by thousands of users in over 100 countries, including farmers, consultants, and in universities.
Running Rumen8 in dairy 'Compact' mode - just the essentials
What does Rumen8 do?
Rumen8 allows the user to design a diet from up to 15 feeds or mixes and ensure the dietary needs of animals are met. Multiple diets can be stored and compared and the difference between feed price and return from milk and/or meat calculated. Reports can be printed or saved as PDF files.
More sophisticated nutrition models are available but require additional feed information and considerably more time and knowledge to determine suitable diets, restricting their usefulness on farm. Rumen8 uses published nutrition models we have found accurate enough over many years using it on farms and Research Centres. It provides a good balance between ease and speed of use with performance that is fitting for farmers, consultants and educational institutes.
Rumen8 includes feeding standards for both dairy and beef cattle, and you can easily change between them from the File menu.
Switch to 'Standard' mode in the File menu to access all of Rumen8
Looking for Rumin8 feed additives? Rumen8 Nutrition and our Rumen8 application has nothing to do with the Rumin8 feed additives. They can be found here.
