Department of Animal Sciences, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, India
Online published on 21 January, 2012.
An experiment was conducted to find out the comparative nutritive value of winter maize stover (WMS) hay, WMS-silage (T-l), 0.5% urea and 1.5% enriched molasses WMS-silage (T-II) and 1.0% urea + 1.5% molasses enriched WMS-silage (T-III); by feeding them as a sole ration to adult cross-bred bulls. The crude protein contents in hay T-I, T-II and T-III groups were 463.5, 01, 10.01 and 12.70 % respectively. The CF EE and ash contents of the diets remained unaffected. The dry matter digestibility was 51.19%, 63.88%, 67.33% and 65.65 V in hay T-I T-II and T-III groups respectively the values being significantly higher (P<0.05) in silage ted groups as compared to hay fed group. Similar increasing trends of digestibilities for CF EE and NFE were observed in silage fed groups as compared to hay group The DCP and TDN values were 1.46, 2.07, 6.47 and 8. 89% and 52.88, 62.90, 64.83 and 64.17% in hav T-I, T-II and T-III groups respectively with corresponding N-balance (g/d) (–6.15, 5.98, 16.70 and 27.08.
