1Department of Animal Production, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur-313 001, India.
2Utilization of Animal Energy, Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, CTAE, Udaipur-313 001, India.
This experiment was conducted on twenty five crossbred heifers randomly divided into five treatment groups of five animals each. The five treatments were: T1 (Wheat straw), T2 (1.5% urea treated wheat straw), T3 (1.5% urea plus 0.5% single super phosphate treated wheat straw), T4 (4% urea ammonia treated wheat straw) and T5 (4% urea ammonia plus 1.5% single super phosphate treated wheat straw). The average daily nitrogen intake for treatments T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 was 82.82, 91.76, 102.89, 129.59 and 150.18 g/day/animal, respectively. The overall differences in nitrogen intake between treatments were highly significant (P<0.01). All the animals were in positive nitrogen balance and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.01). Weight gain and nitrogen retained as per cent of the total nitrogen intake was higher in treatment T5 and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.01) among the treatment groups. It may be concluded that sulphur supplementation to urea treated wheat straw based diets has beneficial effect on nitrogen utilization and growth rate in crossbred heifers.
