Effect of feed supplementation on age at puberty in growing buffalo heifers

Abstract

MF Afroz , SMJ Hossain , GK Deb , SM Amanullah and MA Habib

The study was undertaken to investigate the effect of different levels of concentrate supplement added with ureamolasses-straw based diet on feed intake and utilization, growth and age of sexual maturity of buffalo heifers. Sixteen buffalo heifers aged from 6-12 months were selected and divided into four homogenous (considering age and body weight) treatment groups (A, B, C and D). Buffaloes of all groups were provided urea-molasses-straws (UMS)as basal diet along with concentrate supplement @ 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0% of live weight for group A, B, C and D, respectively. Concentrates were provided twice daily. The date of attaining puberty were recorded when the animals had shown first sign of heat or responded to teaser bull. DM requirement were regularly estimated and daily feed intake, body weight (fortnightly) were also recorded. The feeding trial was persisted for a period of 482days in a CRD design of experiment and accumulated data were analyzed with IBM SPSS 20.0 soft ware. The results indicate that total DM intake (DMIt) differed significantly (p<0.001) among groups. The lowest DMIt was obtained in group A. FCR of group A was obtained significantly better than C and D groups, although overall difference among groups were not significant (p>0.05). However, body weight gain (BWG) of animals among four groups were not significant (p>0.05). Quantity of concentrate feeds allocated by different proportions among four treatment groups had no significant (p>0.05) effect for either attaining age at puberty or body weight at puberty. Based on the results so far obtained from this study, it may be concluded that buffalo heifers could be allowed concentrates @0.25% on live body weight along with UMS adlib for obtaining optimum puberty, as more concentrates than this had not shown significantly better results. However, more researches including more animals need to be done to draw a concrete decision.