Development on the use of oil palm fronds as roughage feed source for thai native cattle

Abstract

An experimental design was a completely randomized design (CRD). Fifteen Thai native cattle were randomly allocated into 5 treatment groups, with 3 animals in one group and one cattle was one replication, assigning to be fed with various roughages: (1) fresh Napier grass (NP), (2) fresh oil palm fronds (OPF), (3) oil palm fronds silage, (4) OPF silage with 2% of molasses and (5) NaOH treated OPF (1.5% by weight OPF). All treatments were supplemented with concentrate feed consisting of 14% of crude protein at the rate of 1% of live weight (BW). The experimental period was 120 days. The data were analyzed with analysis of variance and mean comparisons among treatments were Duncan’s multiple range test (DMRT). The results showed that no significant differences (p>0.05) were observed among 5 treatments in feed intake of dry matter, digestibility of crude protein, digestibility of neutral detergent fiber, feed conversion ratio and growth rates. However, the lowest production cost for 1 kg gain was obtained from the cattle fed with NaOH treated OPF.