Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences (Dec 2015)

Effects of Forage:Concentrate Ratio on Growth Performance, Ruminal Fermentation and Blood Metabolites in Housing-feeding Yaks

  • G. J. Chen,
  • S. D. Song,
  • B. X. Wang,
  • Z. F. Zhang,
  • Z. L. Peng,
  • C. H. Guo,
  • J. C. Zhong,
  • Y. Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.15.0419
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28, no. 12
pp. 1736 – 1741

Abstract

Read online

The objective of this study was to determine the effect of forage: concentrate ratio (F:C) on growth performance, ruminal fermentation and blood metabolites of housing-feeding yaks. Thirty-two Maiwa male yaks (initial body weight = 207.99±3.31 kg) were randomly assigned to four dietary treatments (8 yaks per treatment). Experimental diets were: A, B, C, D which contained 70:30, 60:40, 50:50 and 40:60 F:C ratios, respectively. Dry matter intake and average daily gain in yaks fed the C and D diets were greater (p0.05) among treatments. Treatment C had a higher concentration of total protein and high density lipoprotein (p<0.05) than A and B groups. In addition, there was a trend that the globulin concentration of A group was lower than other treatments (p = 0.079). Results from this study suggest that increasing the level of concentrate from 30% to 50% exerted a positive effect on growth performance, rumen fermentation and blood metabolites in yaks.

Keywords