Site of the experiment
The trial was conducted in the village Alokdiar, Shajadpur, Sirajgonj.
Duration of the experiment
Seventy five days.
Legume (Khesari) hay and silage preparation
Khesari was cultivated for legume hay preparation. There were five plots and each plot had 33 decimal. Napier was cultivated for silage preparation. Napier cutting was supplied to the selected farmers. The plot size for fodder production of each animal was 33 decimal. The farmers planted the Napier cutting on 10 November/2013 and silage was prepared in the field condition.
Selection, grouping and housing of animals
The animals were randomly distributed in four groups each having five animals. The groups were designed as T0, T1, T2, and T3. The animal grouping was done in such a way that the mean live (kg) weight and milk production (l/d) of all the groups was almost similar. The animals housed individually in animal shed subjected to adequate natural ventilation and sunlight. The animals were dewormed with LT-Zol-Vet, ear tagged and then allowed for 14 days to adjust with experimental diets and management prior to commencement of the trial.
Dietary treatments
Four diets were prepared and considered as four dietary treatments, T0 (rice straw+concentrate), T1 (silage+concentrate), T2 (Khesari hay+concentrate) and T3 (UMS+concentrate). The concentrate part of the ration consisted of wheat bran (14%), Khesari bran (13%(), lentil bran (19%), rice polish 15%), pea bran (11%), matikali bran (18%) til oil cake (9%) and salt (1%).The concentrate mixture contains 18% CP and 10.31MJ ME/kg DM. The daily required amount of feed was portioned into two for feeding to the animals in the morning at 7:00 hours and afternoon at 16:00 hours. Concentrate was supplied first followed by roughages. No refusal of concentrate mixture was found in any case. Fresh and clean drinking water was available for all the animals. Feces and urine were collected individually during the last 7 days of the digestion trial.
Measurement of feed intake and sample collection
The roughage intake of each animal was determined by subtracting the amount of left over if any from the amount of feed given on the previous day. Refusal was collected every morning before feed supply and weighed to determine daily feed intake. During the experimental period, the animals consumed all of the concentrate. For metabolism trial output of faeces and urine was recorded daily during the last 7 days of the feeding trial period. The quantity of feed, refusal and feces were weighed daily and representative samples were kept for analysis. Faeces was collected at every 8:00 am and after 24 hours, weighed and sub-sample was taken every day from an animal. Samples of faeces were put in plastic bags in the freezer (-20 °C). Urine sample was collected in a bucket containing 6N H2SO4 solution to maintain a pH of 4 or lower and taken 10% sub-sample and stored in deep freeze at -20 °C until analysis.
Chemical analysis of samples
All the samples of feeds and faeces were prepared and sub-samples were used for analysis. The samples were subjected to chemical analysis for the determination of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and ash following the standard methods. All the samples were analyzed in duplicate and the mean values were recorded.
Statistical analysis
The statistical analysis was done using ‘SPSS-11.5’ statistical program to compute analysis of variance (ANOVA) in completely randomized design. Differences among the treatment means were determined by Duncan′s Multiple range Test (DMRT).