Evaluation of wheat straw, paddy straw and their combination feeding on nutrient utilization in goats

The present experiment aims to investigate the comparison between feeding of wheat straw and paddy straw in combination or as sole roughage. A total of eighteen local non-descript adult male goats (14±02 months age; 28.90±0.66 kg body weight) were selected for the experiment. The animals selected were equally assigned into three groups (n=6) viz.WS, PS and WP, and were fed concentrate mixture and either wheat straw (WS); paddy straw (PS) or a mix of wheat straw and paddy straw (WP) in 60:40 ratio ad libitum as roughage. A feeding trial of 30-days was conducted followed by a metabolism trial of 7-days at the culmination of trial. The results disclosed non-significant difference in terms of average feed intake, mean body weight, metabolic body weight (W0.75), and digestibility of nutrients viz. dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), nitrogen free extract (NFE) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) among the experiment groups. The balance of nitrogen also revealed non-significant difference among the treatment groups, irrespective of their diets. The feeding cost also showed depreciation when the wheat straw was mixed with paddy straw, which resulted in a saving of about 16.5% of feeding cost, without affecting performance, intake and nutrient digestibility of straw. Thus, it could be concluded that wheat straw and paddy straw show potential to be utilized in combination (60:4) without affecting the nutrient intake, their digestibility and performance of goats.