FEEDING PRACTICES & NUTRITIONAL EVALUATION OF CONCENTRATE FEED OF CATTLE USED IN SMALLHOLDER FARMING SYSTEMS OF SOUTH-WEST PART OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

The study was undertaken to identify available feed resources & evaluation of concentrate feed of cattle used by the farmers of southwest part of Bangladesh. A field survey was conducted to collect data from 180 farmers of Rajbari, Chuadanga, Jhenaidah and Magura district with a pretested survey questionnaire. The collected concentrate feed samples were evaluated through chemical analysis. Results showed that farmers’ used rice straw, different types of uncultivated grass, vegetable waste, napier grass, tree leaves, sugarcane top, fruits peel, maize leaves, urea molasses straw, water hyacinth & sorghum as roughage source and rice bran, wheat bran, broken rice, broken maize, mustard oil cake, broken wheat & molasses as concentrate source. They also used boiled rice water, vitamin mineral premix and commercial cattle pellet. The average price of per kg rice straw, napier grass, rice bran, wheat bran, broken rice, broken maize, broken wheat, mustard oil cake, molasses, vitamin mineral premix, commercial cattle pellet feed was Tk. 3.44, 2.78, 10.69, 30.81, 23.21, 26.47, 25.89, 40.75, 26.75, 722.34 & 32.93 respectively. Proximate composition of available concentrated feed items showed average DM% of rice bran, wheat bran, broken rice, broken maize, mustard oil cake and broken wheat is (89.23 ± 0.26), (86.62 ± 0.28), (87.55 ± 0.33), (88.04 ± 0.36), (87.85 ± 0.26) & (88.82 ± 0.33) respectively. Average CP% of rice bran, wheat bran, broken rice, broken maize, mustard oil cake and broken wheat is (7.25 ± 0.21), (14.77 ± 0.40), (8.78 ± 0.19), (8.13 ± 0.14), (31.66 ± 0.38) & (11.75 ± 0.18) respectively. Average CF% of rice bran, wheat bran, broken rice, broken maize, mustard oil cake and broken wheat is (19.18 ± 0.52), (9.32 ± 0.23), (0.54 ± 0.04), (4.16 ± 0.14), (10.89 ± 0.18) & (2.61 ± 0.15) respectively. Highest number (91.67%) of farmers claimed higher price of feed as the key challenges and 87.78% farmers suggested that reducing feed cost was the primary solution to overcome the challenges regarding cattle feeding. On the basis of above study it is evident that rice straw is the main roughage feed and rice bran is the main concentrate feed which are used by 100% farmers and 95.56% farmers respectively. The use of commercial pellet feed is limited which is used by only 12.78% farmers.