Tropentag 2020, September 9 - 11, virtual conference, Germany "Food and nutrition security and its resilience to global crises"

Effect of Feeding Graded Levels of Moringa Feed on Intake, Digestibility, Enteric CH₄ Emission, Rumen Fermentation, Milk Yield and its Quality of BLRI Cattle Breed-1 Dairy Cows

Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), Animal Production Research Institute (APRD), Bangladesh

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to evaluate the effect of feeding graded level of moringa feed on intake, digestibility, rumen fermentation, methane (CH₄) production, milk yield and its quality.
Fifteen BLRI Cattle Breed (BCB-1) dairy cows of third or fourth parity after wk 3 and 4 of calving were selected and divided into three dietary groups having five animals in each considering their live weight and ex-entry daily milk yield. A group of cows fed a control diet (T0) consisting 1:1 dry matter (DM) of napier silage and conventionally mixed concentrate. The other two groups were fed the control diet randomly replacing i) 50% (T1) or ii) 100% (T2) of its concentrate by moringa feed. All the three diets were iso-nitrogenous and formulated to supply daily energy and crude protein (CP) requirement of the cows according to BSTI standard.
The replacement of concentrate mixture by moringa feed to increase the feed efficiency and to reduce the DM or CP intake (p<0.05) per 100 kg or metabolic body weight. The fresh milk and 4% fat corrected milk (FCM) yield were significantly higher (p<0.05) in T2 group (4.39 kg d^-1 and 4.59 kg d^-1) compared to T0 group (3.30 kg d^-1 and 3.49 kg d^-1), respectively. It also revealed that the total volatile fatty acid (VFA’s) concentration was increased (p<0.05) and decreased the blood and milk cholesterol and ammonia-nitrogen (NH₃-N) when moringa feed was added in the control diet; without showing any significant(p>0.05) change in CH₄ production, fat, solid not fat (SNF), lactose or protein content of milk.
Therefore, moringa feed increased the productivity of dairy cow, replacing the whole concentrate diet.

Keywords: Digestibility, intake, milk production, milk quality, moringa feed, rumen environment

Contact Address: Muhammad Khairul Bashar, Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), Animal Production Research Institute (APRD), Dhaka, Bangladesh, e-mail: kbashar20yahoo.com