A Total Mixed Ration (TMR) is one in which all the eed stuffs are blended together to be fed as feed. Although, the animal producers have been feeding total mixed rations partially for many years, but now there seems more interest in the feeding of total mixed rations than ever before. The aim of Total Mixed Ration is to provide sufficient energy and protein to the animals (Hoffmann et al., 1998). The TMR fed cows have shown more milk production in comparison to those cows which are fed according to the traditional feeding (Varhegyi et al., 2002). It was noticed that sorghum green fodder based TMR was economical for feeding to crossbred calves without any adverse effect on growth performance (RAU, 2002). In feeding practices of TMR's, it is ensured that the animals are receiving a balanced diet to prevent many common nutritional and metabolic disorders. Total mixed ration can improve the palatability of feed and reduce the handling problems and also the wastage of feed is reduced by 3–5% which reduces the feed cost by 5–7%. Labour cost can also be reduced by feeding total mixed rations.

Three types of experimental total mixed ration (TMR) were prepared in which roughage and concentrate ratios were maintained as 60:40. The green roughage was sorghum and the dry was taken as wheat bhusa. These were also mixed in a proportion of 60:40. The details of the TMRs' are given in Table 1.

For preparing the TMRs', the sorghum was chaffed and all other ingredients like Maize, DORB, MOC, DOMC and Malt sprout were ground coarsely. After that, all the feed ingredients given in the Table 1 were blended together and fed to the animals as one feed. Eighteen, growing crossbred heifers ranging between 100 to 202 kg of body weight were selected from the herd maintained at the university farm. These were divided into three groups of six each in the basis of their body weight.

All the heifers were fed TMRs' individually ad lib fresh and clean water was offered twice daily to all the animals. The residues and feeds (TMR's) offered to individual heifers were weighed and recorded daily. The weighing of TMR's was performed on a spring balance of 25Kg capacity. The heifers were weighed at fortnightly intervals during growth trial. The average weights for three consecutive days were used for determining the growth rate. The representative samples of feeds were analysed for different proximate principles as per the method of AOAC (1991). The data recorded during the course of this investigation were statistically analysed using RBD according to Snedecor and Cochran (1980).

The measure of the body weight gain of growing heifers on different treatment was the primary objective of this growth experiment. As explained earlier, the animals were weighed at the start of the experiment where average body weights of three groups were almost similar having non-significant difference among them and at that time the hypothesis was to study three TMRs having different composition, if they have different performance on the group of the animals. The experiment was carried out for 90 days and body weights were taken at every 15 day intervals. It is clear from table 2 that at the end on I^st 15 days the gross gains were of the order of 7.78, 7.68 and 5.50 Kg in three treatments I, II and III respectively. The values in I^st and II^nd did not differ significantly.

The trend of the values at 30 days was also noted almost same as at 15 days and gross gains here were noted as 15.75, 15.23 and 12.67 Kg in T₁, T₂ and T₃, respectively. The gross body weight gains at the end of 45 days of growth trial were noted as 23.67 kg in T₁, 21.58 kg in T₂ and 19.17 kg T₃. All these three values differed statistically from each others. The trend at the end of 60 days was same, when the values of gross gains were calculated as 31.25 kg in T₁, followed 27.08 in T₂ and 25.25 kg in T₃. The gross gain of heifers on three TMR's at 75^th day of the trial were noted as significantly highest (P < 0.05) in T₁ (38.58) followed by T₂ (34.17) and T₃. The body weight at the end of the experiment i.e. after three months was noted as highest in T₁ having 47.25 kg and lowest in T₃ (40.08 kg). T₂ had medium gain and the value was 43.33.

It was concluded from experiment that TMRI was best among the three treatments. The results showed that the body weight gain was significantly higher in treatment group I^st.

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