Nutrient utilization from oat straw and green berseem combinations

An experiment was conducted to asses the effect of replacement of oat straw with graded levels of green berseem on the nutrient availability. The In-sacco degradability of oat straw: green berseem combinations (80: 20, 70: 30, 60: 40 and 50:50 ratio on DM basis) revealed that the effective degradabiilty of DM increased (P<0.05) linearly and the undegradable fraction declined (P<0.05) with the increase in level of berseem. A combination of oat straw and berseem in 50: 50 ratio gave the best results. The in-vivo evaluation of these combinations on 16 crossbred heifers revealed that the DM intake (as % BW) was higher (P<0.05) in combination containing 50% berseem as compared to the one containing only 20 percent berseem, whereas no significantly difference was observed between other treatmetns. The digestibility of nutrients incerased linearly. The digestibility of DM, CP and NDF was statistically comparable in the combinations containing 40 or 50% berseem but significantly (P<0.05) higher than other combina-tions. It was concluded that oat straw and green berseem in 60:40 ratio resulted in optimum nutrient utilization in heifers.