Vol. 8, Issue 6 (2019)

Author(s):
Pawan Kumar, BS Tewatia, Ramsawroop and VS Panwar

Abstract:
A survey was conducted to assess the feeding practices and plane of nutrition of lactating buffaloes in Jhajjar district of Haryana state. The survey was conducted in January - February, 2019. For this 15 villages were randomly selected, three villages from each of five blocks of the district, which were geographically located apart and truly represented the animal husbandry practices of blocks. The data were collected from 150 buffalo owners belonging to two different categories of farmers i.e. having land holding more than or less than 5 acres. The survey data revealed that in rabi season, berseem was the most common (82.6%) green fodder fed by of farmer of Jhajjar district followed by grasses (32%) and oat fodder (26%). Majority of buffalo owners were using wheat grain (88.7%) as chief source of energy and cotton seed (81.3%) and cottonseed cake (80%) as major source of protein. The respondents were occasionally providing common salt (25.3%) and rarely mineral mixture (16%) to their animals. Results showed that average body weight and milk yield of families having land holding >5 acre is 495.80 kg and 9.99 kg per day, respectively which is higher than families having land holding <5 acre (478.30 kg and 5.86 kg/day). Average CP intake of buffaloes of farmers with less land holding was 1.21 kg/day which was 3.93% less than the requirements, whereas, buffaloes of farmers with large land holding were receiving 1.45 kg CP per day which is 2.11 % more than the requirement. It may be inferred that majority of buffaloes under the study were underfed in terms of DM and proteins but fed adequately in terms of TDN.