STUDY ON WATER HYACINTH AS A CATTLE FEED

Abstract

It is believed that the origin of Water hyacinth to be Amazonia, Brazil, with natural spread throughout Brazil and to other Central and South American countries. Water hyacinth is available also in Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, China etc. To evaluate the nutritional value of water hyacinth, two step of trial was conducted at Feni district under a project work of Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. The proximate composition of water hyacinth and its digestion was completed at animal nutrition laboratory during a period of six months. The DM, CP, CF, EE and total ash content of water hyacinth was 12.37, 11.06, 22.00, 1.01, and 12.82 per cent, respectively which was comparable to other perennial grasses available in Bangladesh. The digestion of water hyacinth was also observed though laboratory analysis and the per cent of digestibility of the collected sample was found as 19.16, 45.62, 18.63, 35.29, and 42.27 percent for DM, CP, CF, EE and total ash content, respectively. From this task, it may be concluded that water hyacinth nutritionally was in standard condition,hence,it could be used as a promising feed resource for ruminant