Department of Animal Nutrition, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-255 004, India
Online published on 5 January, 2012.
The presumptive identification studies whicb provide " mean of grouping the rumen bacteria according to physiologicai characteristics were conducted on fistulated cattle and buffalo fed wheat straw - concentrate mixture (CP14%) diet at maintenance level. Streptococcus bovis (20.7), Succinimonas amylalytica (17.2), Bacteroidts ruminicola (6.9) and Bacteroides succinogenes (6.9) % were more readily isolated from cattle than buffalo (6.7, 6.7,0.0 and 3.3% of total isolates). The isolates like Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens (20.0), Cillobacterium cellulosolvens (6.7) and Clostridium lochheadii (6.7) were in higher concentration in buffalo vis-a-vis cattle (6.9, 0.0 and 3.4%). Ruminococcus albus (10.3%) was densely populated than Ruminococcus flavefaciens (6.9%) in cattle, while Ruminococcus bromii was equally distributed in cattle (3.4) and buffalo (3.3) % rumen. The occurrence of Bacteroides amylophilus was relatively less in cattle (3.4) than buffalo (16.6) %. The physiology of bacteria revealed that they were celluloytic (28 vs 33%), amlolytic (59 vs 53%) and acid producers from glucose (62 vs 23%). The hydrogen sulphide producing strains of buffalo (30%) were considerably higher than those of cattle (14%).
