Supplementation of urea-molasses-straw based diet with different levels of concentrate for fattening of emaciated bulls

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of supplementation of Urea-Molasses-Straw (UMS) based diet with different levels of concentrate for fattening emaciated bulls. The unsupplemented control diet T0 was composed of UMS (80%) and green grass (20%). In the treatment diets T1, T2 and T3 concentrate mix was added at 10, 20 and 30% of DM requirement, respectively to replace the same amounts of UMS and green grass. There was significant (p<0.01) difference in average DM intake, which were 3.42, 4.65, 4.79 and 5.14 kg for T0, T1, T2 and T3, respectively. The animals fed supplemented diets T3, T2 and T1 gained significantly (p<0.01) higher live weight (56.0, 46.0 and 40.0 kg, respectively) and had better feed conversion ratio (6.58, 7.34 and 8.22, respectively; non-significantly) than the animals fed on T0 (Live weight gain 11.0 kg and feed conversion ratio 21.95). There was a tendency to increase nutrient digestibility with increased levels of concentrate supplementation. The highest cost for each kg meat production was recorded for diet T0 (Tk. 143.45) followed by diets T3 (Tk. 75.67), T2 (Tk. 72.91) and the lowest was recorded for diet T1 (Tk. 68.73). © 2009 Asian Network for Scientific Information.