Nutritive Value of Whole Sugarcane Based Ration in Lactating Crossbred Phule Triveni Cow

A trial of six month duration was conducted on 20 lactating crossbred ‘Phule Triveni’ cows fed on whole sugarcane based ration. The animals under treatment T₀ were fed with concentrate and chopped green maize while the animals under treatments T₁, T₂ and T₃ were fed with concentrate and chopped green whole sugarcane @ 50%, 75% and 100%, of the total roughage DM while remaining was met out from jowar kadbi. The DM digestibility significantly differed among the treatments, the values being 62.95, 60.57, 63.23, 66.28% in the treatments T₀, T₁, T₂ and T₃, respectively. The DCP contents of the ration were 7.98, 7.57, 7.87 and 8.10 and that of TDN was 65.84, 62.67, 65.67, 68.16 kg per 100 kg DM in treatments T₀, T₁, T₂ and T₃, respectively. The rations had DE (Mcal/kg) 4.24, 4.22, 4.11 and 4.21 and ME (Mcal/kg) 3.63, 3.60, 3.51 and 3.60 in respective treatments. It may thus be, concluded that, inclusion of whole sugarcane in the ration of lactating cows even up to 100 per cent as roughage has no adverse effect on digestibility of nutrients and energy utilization and comparable to green maize in nutritive value.