Farmers’ perceptions of climate change and its implication on livestock production in mixed-farming system areas of Bale highlands, Southeast Ethiopia; Challenges and extents of Soil and Water Conservation measures in Guba-Lafto Woreda of North Wollo, Ethiopia; Evaluation of milk production performance of lactating Fogera cows fed with urea and effective micro-organisms treated rice straw as basal diet.

E3 Journal of Agricultural Research and Development

E3 Journal of Agricultural Research and Development Vol. 7 (2) pp. 0111-0119, April 2017; © E3 Journals; ISSN 2276-9897
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18685/EJARD(7)2_EJARD-17-011

Evaluation of milk production performance of lactating Fogera cows fed with urea and effective micro-organisms treated rice straw as basal diet

Lemma Gulilat 1 * , Endalew Walelign 1
1 Debre Tabor University, faculty of agriculture and environmental sciences, Animal sciences, Box 272, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia
*Corresponding Author E-mail: indexwalelign@gmail.com
Accepted 24 February 2017

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at Andassa Livestock Research Center with the main objective of evaluating the milk production performance and feed intake of Fogera cows fed on rice straw treated by urea and effective micro-organisms (EMO) as basal diet. The experiment was conducted using a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three treatments and three replications. Blocking was based on the initial body weight of cows. Nine Fogera cows with average age, parity, initial body weight and stage of lactation was 9.3 year, 4.4, 262.7kg and 53.1 days, respectively used for the feeding trial were randomly assigned to three treatments. The treatments were 67% wheat bran and 33% NSC from 2kg concentrate + untreated rice straw (T1), 67% wheat bran and 33% NSC from 2kg concentrate +urea treated rice straw (T2) and 67% wheat bran and 33% NSC from 2kg concentrate + rice straw treated by effective micro-organism (T3). Feed offers and refusals for feeding trials were recorded daily, while body weight change of cows during the feeding trial was recorded every fifteen days. The chemical compositions of the experimental feeds indicated that the untreated, urea treated and EMO treated rice straws had low (3.46%), highest (5.51%) and intermediate (4.48) CP contents, respectively. Feeding of Fogera cows with EMO treated rice straw resulted in significantly (p<0.05) higher daily dry matter intake (8.52 kg/cow, higher daily weight gain (27.7 g/day) and higher daily milk yield (2.82l/day) when compared with those cows fed on untreated rice straw. Furthermore, cows fed with EMO treated rice straw yielded the highest net income and marginal return rate (MRR) (82.6 and 194%, respectively). Hence, according to the results of this study feeding of lactating Fogera cows with EMO treated rice straw is efficient for both biologically and economically compared to urea treated rice straw.

Keywords: effective microorganism, lactating cows, rice straw, milk yield, urea treatment

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