Feed intake, growth performance and digestibility in goats fed whole corn plant silage and Napier grass

Khaing, K. T. and Loh, T. C. and Ghizan, S. and Halim, R. A. and Samsudin, A. A. (2015) Feed intake, growth performance and digestibility in goats fed whole corn plant silage and Napier grass. [Journal / Magazine]

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Abstract

Shortage and inconsistent quality of forage in developing countries are the major constraints to the development of ruminant sector. To overcome these problems, feeding of ruminants with conserved forages is an important feeding strategy to ensure the success of ruminant production in the third world countries. The use of whole corn plant as silage has drawn many attention due to high protein efficiency, relatively high digestible energy and total digestible nutrients. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine feed intake, growth performance and nutrients digestibility in goats fed different inclusion level of whole corn plant silage to Napier grass based diets. Fifteen male Boer cross goats around six months old and approximately 18.54 ± 1.83 kg of body weight were used as experimental animals. The goats were assigned into five treatment groups consisted of different proportions of Napier grass (G) and whole plant corn silage (CS) –T1:100/0 G/CS; T2:75/25 G/CS; T3:50/50 G/CS; T4:25/75 G/CS and T5:0/100 G/CS. The increase of corn silage to Napier grass proportion demonstrates increase in dry matter intake and growth performance in the goats. The highest nutrient digestibility was observed in T5:0/100 G/CS and T3:50/50 G/CS. It can be concluded that high proportion of corn silage to grass diets had resulted in increases in feed intake and growth performance of goats. Feeding the animals with T5 and T3 resulted in high nutrient utilization compared to other treatments. However, the highest growth performance was observed in animals that were fed with T5 diets.

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