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Matching Livestock Systems with Available Resources |
MEKARN Regional Conference 2007 |
An on-farm trial experiment was carried out in Treang district, Takeo province from June to September 2006. Twenty female cattle were allocated to five levels of sun-dried cassava foliage (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 % of body weight in DM basis) to evaluate the growth response when fed a basal diet of untreated rice straw plus a rumen supplement. The heifers were tethered alongside the feed trough in each household, where they had free access to the experimental diet and water. The heifers were provided rumen supplement (mainly urea, sulphur and other minerals) at 0.25% body weight and ad libitum rice straw. The design was a completely randomized design (CRD) with four replications of each treatment.
The intake of the leaf component of the cassava was 90% of the offer but only 45% of the offer level of petiole was consumed. The total intake of DM and crude protein intake increased according to the intake of cassava foliage. Daily weight gain increased from 201 to 402 g/day and feed conversion was better with increasing levels of protein from sun-dried cassava foliage in the diet. The responses were linear over the range of cassava crude protein intakes from 0 to 1.6 g/kg live weight.
It is concluded that supplementation with sun dried cassava foliage stimulated the growth performance of cattle and that the response was linear over the range from 0 to 1.6g cassava crude protein/kg live weight.