Perfomance of streers fed on supplementary diets based on NaOH-treated Maize cobs and ures

An experiment to study the performance of Boran steers fed on supplementary diets based on Na0H treated maize or untreated maize cobs with urea or cotton seed cake was carried out. The diets in the experiment contained 45.5 Na0H treated maize cobs with 3% urea, 45.0% treated maize cobs with 37.5% cotton seed cake. These diets were fed as supplementary feeds at a rate ranging from 2-4kg per day to grazing steers on free range at stocking rate of 2 ha per beast. The steers on average weighed 251kg. The digestibility study with sheep indicated insignificant (p,0.05) improvement in DM, OM and CF digestibility with Na0H treatment, while CP, EE and NFE showed only small improvement. Nitrogen source seemed to have little or no effect on digestibility of these fractions. Steers fed on Na0H treated diets gained 583g/day and steers fed on untreated maize cobs gained 522g/day over the 90 days feeding period. Feed conversion on the basis of supplementary feed was improved from 6.54kg/kg gain to 5.93kg/kg gain by the same treatment. Source of nitrogen had no influence on gains nor on feed conversion. Among four treatments resulting from 2 x 2 combination, Na0H treatment together with urea out-performed the rest of the groups. The steers fed on the Na0H treated maize cobs diets yielded slightly higher both hot and chilled carcasses, dressed slightly higher and had heavier liver, kidney fat weights. Carcasses from steers fed on Na0H treated maize cobs diets had significantly (P,0.05) low CP contents and more fat than those from steers fed on untreated maize based diets. Cotton seed cake supported slightly higher CP content in carcasses than urea for Na0h treated maize cob diets, while source of protein had no influence on DM, OM, EE of carcasses from steers fed on untreated maize cob diets. An economic analysis of the data indicated that it is economically feasible to raise steers on limited grazing with supplemental diets based on maize cobs rations with urea as major source of protein. Though the results in this experiment showed that Na0H treatment + urea was the most economic combination, the benefits of using Na0H treatment depends on the prices of the chemical and the source of protein prevailing in a particular situation.