Effect of Dietary Supplementation of XPC on Milk Production in Lactating Murrah Buffaloes

The effect of XPC (composed of yeast fermentation metabolites) supplementation on production performance of lactating buffaloes was studied. Forty-eight healthy lactating buffaloes (BW 540.20±17.96 kg) in early to mid lactation stages were blocked by body weight, lactation number, days in lactation and milk production during one week prior to the start of the experiment. Within blocks buffaloes were randomly distributed into 2 groups of 24 each control (no supplementation) or XPC (14 g/d of XPC^TM, Diamond V, USA). The experiment was conducted in four phases to minimize the variation in body weight, days in milk and milk yield. A 10-week study was performed with 8-week treatment feeding period plus a week of adaptation and a week of covariate period prior to the treatment feeding. The buffaloes were fed concentrate mixture with green fodders (maize and sorghum) with oat hay (9: 1) ad libitum to meet their maintenance and production requirements. A 50 g premix was prepared in advance containing 14 g of XPC with 36 g of concentrate mixture and fed to XPC fed group daily before morning feeding, whereas 50 g of concentrate mixture without XPC was given to control animals. Feed consumption and milk yield changes were recorded daily. The results of the present study indicate that dietary supplementation of XPC improves milk yield of lactating buffaloes. Average milk yields in XPC treatment group (7.56 L/d) were significantly (P£0.01) higher than control group (7.14 L/d), resulting 5.89% improvement with supplementation of XPC having similar DMI. The supplementation of XPC also improved 4% fatcorrected milk yield and energy-corrected milk yield by 4.66 and 4.98%, respectively without any adverse non-significantly impact on daily DMI and fat percentage. Further it reduced feed cost (Rs.) per kg 4% FCM yield in XPC (16.39) than control (16.98) and high return of Rs. 327.57 per animal per day in XPC group. The net return in comparison to control was Rs. 21.01 in XPC which suggests that supplementation of XPC is economically feasible. It may be concluded that incorporating XPC in the diet of lactating buffaloes improve the production performance of buffaloes and enhance the profitability of the producers.