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.
