Effect of high plane of nutrition on the performance of haemonchus contortus infected kids

Abstract

Aim: To determine the effect of severity of Haemonchus contortus infection on performance and economics of raising kids fed on two respective plane of nutrition. Materials and Methods: The feeding trial was conducted for 120 days with non-descript female kids (3-5 months age). The kids were randomly allocated into two dietary treatments having normal protein normal energy (NPNE) and high protein medium energy (HPME) using conventional feedstuffs (crushed maize, ground nut cake, berseem hay and chaffed paddy straw), fortified with mineral mixture (1%), salt (0.5%) and vitamin premix (@20gq-1 feed),each treatment having three levels of H. contortus infection (W0, W500 and W2000) in a 2x3 factorial design. The study wasundertaken to ascertain the performance and economics of raising kids fed on higher plane of nutrition. Results: The total dry matter intake (DMI: kg) was 41.18, 39.56 and 41.11 in W0, W500 and W2000 in group HPME; whereas in NPNE the DMI was 39.66, 38.03 and 35.95 kg in the respective infection levels. The highest body weight gain was obtained in HPME than NPNE from 1st to 16th week of experiment. The infected kids at NPNE gained at a slower rate as compared to the kids maintained at HPME. The mean percentage of monocytes, lymphocytes and neutrophils fluctuated in different ways throughout the experiment without any significant difference and these cells were not followed any specific trend. However, significantly higher (P<0.05) eosinophils count was recorded in W500 and W2000 of HPME fed kids as compared to W500 and W2000 of NPNE fed kids. In the present study the maximum benefit could be obtained by feeding of HPME diet with W500 infection as compared to other treatments. Conclusions: The cost of raising kids per kg meat was worked out to be the most economical at high plane of nutrition even with the heavy H. contortus infection.