Division of Dairy Cattle Nutrition, National Dairy Research Institute, Knrnal-132 001, India
*Present Address: Animal Husbandry Department, The Agricultural University No, 1, Hanoi, Vietnam.
Online published on 21 January, 2012.
Three adult male Murrah buffaloes fitted with rumen cannulae were used in a 3 x 3 latin square switch over design experiment. The animals were fed a ration constituting of 5 kg/head/day of green maize ad-lib, wheat straw and concentrate mixture containing soybean cake either untreated (T1) or formaldehyde treated and replaced untreated cake by 100 (T2) and 50 (T3) percent level to meet nutritional requirements. Protozoal counts were made in samples of rumen liquor drawn from each animal for 3 consecutive days at 0, 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8 hours after usual feeding in each period. The total protozoal coun twas 1.34 x 105, 1.08 x 105 and 1.28 x 105/ml of SRL. for T1, T2 and T3 respectively. Of the total population of protozoa on an average 0.13 X105, 0.16 x 105 and 0.15 x l05/ml SRL were holotrichs and 1.21 x 105, 0.92 x105 and 1.13 x105/ml of SRL were entodinomorphs on respective treatments. The protozoal count and the nature of protozoa, thus, significantly changed on feeding formaldehyde treated soybean cake.
