Potential of feeding beef cattle with whole corn crop silage and rice straw in Malaysia

Abstract

The potential of using whole corn crop silage and rice straw as an alternative feed for the beef cattle based on the intake and growth performance were evaluated. Using randomised completely block design, nine adult Mafriwal cattle were blocked intro three groups and treated with three different forage diets supplemented with 20% pelleted palm kernel cake on dry matter basis. The treatments were 100% rice straw (RS), 100% corn silage (CS) and an equal mixture of rice straw and corn silage (MIX) fed ad libitum. The animals were housed in individual pens, and the feeding trial was conducted for 12 weeks with 2 weeks of adaptation period. The results showed that CS had the best feed nutritive composition with the lowest concentration of highly indigestible fibre and the highest concentration of organic matter and energy. The CS also had the highest intake, and the corn silage inclusion in MIX managed to improve the intake on par with CS in terms of the dry matter intake of body weight (DMI of BW), voluntary intake (VI) and crude protein (CP) intake. Cattle fed with CS gave the highest and most stable BW gain with an average daily gain (ADG) of 808 g/day rivalling cross-bred cattle fed with high amount of concentrates. The all straw diet (RS) supplemented with PKC recorded a positive ADG of 133 g/day while the MIX gave 383 g/day matching total Napier grass diet.

Comparative Study on Biomass Yield, Morphology, Silage Quality of Hybrid Napier and Pakchong and Their Utilization in Bull Calves

“…Recently, Nazli et al [33] studied body weight gain of beef cattle after feeding corn silage, rice straw and combination of both and obtained no significant changes of final live weight which corresponds to this study, although they obtained significant differences for average daily weight gain. Bahri et al [34] also reported significant changes of daily average weight gain of Bali cattle in Indonesia fed different combinations of corn straw and peanut straw silage.…”

Potential of four corn varieties at different harvest stages for silage production in Malaysia

“…Feed is the major cost of beef production and the current feeding system relies heavily on expensive feed with seasonal usage of fodder grasses while corn silage is very rarely utilised. Currently, no formal production data on corn silage production is available in Malaysia due to very low production [4]. Compared to the conventional feeding system, corn silage is a competitive alternative as it has many advantages for use as ruminant feed.…”

Growth Performance and Sexual Maturity in Malaysian Kedah-Kelantan and Kedah-Kelantan × Brangus Bulls

“…Bodyweight was measured monthly by the Tru-Test-EC2000 animal weighing balance made in New Zealand (Auckland). Average monthly weight gains (g/d) in different age were calculated by dividing the initial and final body weight differences with the total number of days between two stages of live weights (Nazli et al, 2018). Puberty was defined when a bull produced an ejaculate containing a minimum of 50×10 6 sperm cells with minimum 10% motile (Wolf et al, 1965).…”