The effect of lactic acid bacteria-containing calf starter on Holstein calf performance

Abstract

Newborn calve has an undeveloped rumen and tend to easily diarrhea caused by Escherichia coli from environment and cause death. Feeding calf starter (CS) contains probiotic after birth can promote rumen development and suppress E. coli. This experiment aimed to evaluate the effect of different feeding calf starter on Friesian Holstein (FH) calf performance. The treatments were the use of different calf starter, namely calf starter from farmer (CS-F) and calf starter contains fermented cabbage waste (CS-L). The materials were CS contains fermented waste cabbage, CS from farmer and 30 FH calves aged 7-14 days and 41.14 ± 3.28 kg initial body weight. Calf starters were fed twice per day after giving milk, forage and water given ad libitum. The parameters measured were feed intake, feces consistency and daily gain. The data were analyzed with t-test. The result indicated that there were no different (P>0.05) on feed intake and average daily gain, but CS contains fermented waste cabbage produced better feces consistency than CS from farmer (P<0.05). Feeding calf starter with addition of fermented cabbage waste produced good calve performance.