Evaluation of compressibility characteristics of the forage-concentrate composition to produce complete feed blocks

An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of two pressure levels in the hydraulic press (200 and 220 bar) of complete feed blocks (CFBs) manufacturing machine, three levels of the pressure dwell time (5, 17 and 30 seconds) and two levels of forage particle size (10 and 30mm) on compressibility characteristics of CFBs in a completely randomized design with 12 treatments and 10 replications. In each CFB, forage, concentrate and molasses ratio was 45: 45: 10 and forage portion of the diet contains 29 percent of alfalfa hay and 16 percent of wheat straw, based on dry matter. By increasingin the hydraulic press pressure and the pressure dwell time, the density of CFBs were increased. The average of density (Kg/m3) in CFBs containing large forage particles (457.03 ± 4.36)were lower than CFBs containing small forage particles (478.28 ± 4.50, p