Total Mixed Ration/Farming Simulator 15
Total Mixed Ration (or TMR) is a form of Cow feed available in Farming Simulator 15. This substance can be produced by mixing Hay and Silage in a Mixer Wagon (with optional Straw as filler). The mixture is fed to Cows at the Cow Pasture in order to increase their productivity by a very wide margin.
Creating TMR
To create TMR, you will require one of the Mixer Wagons, such as the Kuhn Profile 1880 or Kuhn SPV Confort 12.
To make "pure" TMR, load the Mixer Wagon with both Hay and Silage, according to the proper mixture ratio (at least 25% of each, no more than 75% of each).
Hay can be loaded in the form of either round bales or square bales, using a Front Loader. Each bale will add 4,000 liters of Hay to the Mixer Wagon, regardless of what shape it has.
Silage can also be loaded in the form of Bales (round, wrapped bales, created from round Hay bales using a Bale Wrapper. Each such bale adds 4,000 liters of Silage to the Mixer Wagon.
Alternatively, the Mixer Wagon can be driven over Silage sitting in a fermentation bunker, and then activated in order to suck in Silage directly. This way Silage is drawn in gradually, and you may deactivate the Mixer Wagon whenever the mixture between Hay and Silage seems appropriate to you. Note that on the vanilla maps, there is a small fermentation bunker right next to the Cow Pasture for this explicit purpose.
With one bale of Hay (4,000 liters) loaded into the Mixer Wagon, you can add 1,350 liters of Silage to create 5,350 liters of TMR, making up a 75/25 ratio of Hay and Silage. If you are using Silage Bales (4,000 liters each), you will instead get 8,000 liters of TMR at a 50/50 ratio.
Of course, the Mixer Wagons available in the base game have much more space than this, so you can add Silage or Hay as appropriate to increase the total output volume.
Adding Straw
Straw is an optional addition to TMR. It is not absolutely required, but will greatly increase the volume of TMR produced, using the easily-collectible Straw as a filler material.
Straw is added to the Mixer Wagon in bale form (either round or square). Each bale, regardless of shape, adds exactly 4,000 liters of Straw to the mixture.
The easiest mixture to create contains one Hay bale (4,000 liters), one Straw -bale (4,000 liters), and one Silage bale (4,000 liters). This creates 12,000 liters of TMR, where 1/3 of the volume consists of easy-to-get Straw.
For somewhat better efficiency, you might prefer to load one Hay bale (4,000 liters), one Straw bale (another 4,000 liters), and then suck in just over 2,666 liters of Silage from the fermentation bunker. This will give a ratio of 37.5% / 37.5% / 25% between the three substances, respectively. Although the end product is only 10,666 liters of TMR, this mixture contains a higher proportion of Straw and Hay, which are generally easier to acquire than Silage. If Silage is plentiful, you may prefer to forgo this option. A simpler way to mix TMR is to load the mixer with one bale of hay and one bale of straw. Then, suck up silage until the symbols change to the TMR in the box located in the lower right-hand corner of the display.
Remember, if there is too much Straw in the final mixture (over 40%, or enough to drop one of the other substances under 25%), the mixture will no longer be considered TMR. If such a mixture is fed to the cows, it will register as a combination of plain Grass and Silage feeds instead. If there is no room in the Mixer Wagon to fix this (by adding more Hay and/or Silage as required), consider dumping some of the TMR into the feeding trough (see below) in order to make that room available.
Feeding the Cows
Once TMR has been created, you can feed it to your cows by driving your Mixer Wagon up to one of the feeding troughs, and unload. If the mixture has the correct ratios, it will be considered TMR by the game. The game will remember exactly how much TMR has been dumped into the trough, and will display this value in the info menu under the "COWS" section.
As long as there is at least 1 liter of TMR in the trough, Cows will only consume the TMR, at a rate of 250 liters per Cow, per day. They will not consume any Grass and/or Silage that may still be present in the trough. Only once the TMR runs out completely will the cows proceed to eat any remaining Grass and/or Silage.
As long as the cows are eating the TMR, their productivity is increased to 90%. If the Cow Shed is also properly supplied with Straw Bedding, the productivity will be 100%. This affects the rate of Milk production, Manure production, and Slurry production. If the TMR runs out, the productivity will drop to whatever level is appropriate based on what else the cows have left to eat.