UTILIZE A NOVEL INOCULANT (MID/1) TO IMPROVE THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF THE CORN SILAGE AND ITS EFFECT ON MILK PRODUCTION OF EGYPTIAN DAIRY BUFFALO AND CATTLE

Abstract

SUMMARY he purpose of this study is to determine the effects of using the MID/1 as a biological inoculant on the feed intake, nutritive value, digestion coefficients, milk yield and net economic return of corn silage in dairy cattle and buffaloes. Twenty dairy buffaloes (582 kg) and 12 dairy cattle (595 kg) in total were used, and they were each randomly divided into two symmetrical groups. The control group was fed untreated corn silage. MID/1 group (n=6 for cattle and 10 for buffaloes), fed corn silage treated with MID/1 inoculant. In vivo digestibility coefficients and nutritive value were determined using silica as an internal indicator. The feed intake, feed residues, dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), crude fibre (CF), ether extract (EE), nitrogen-free extract (NFE) and lactate and acetate acids of treated and untreated corn silage and concentrate feed mixture (CFM) were determined. The milk yield, fat and protein percentages of lactating cattle and buffaloes were recorded daily. The nutritive value and digestion coefficients of DM, OM, CP, CF and EE in the MID/1 group were significantly higher than those of untreated corn silage. The milk yield was increased significantly by 9.02% for cattle and by 9.68% for buffaloes in the MID/1 group compared to the untreated group (27.8 and 11.9 vs. 25.5 and 10.85 kg/head/day, respectively). The milk fat percentage was slightly increased in both cattle and buffaloes but did not differ in the inoculated corn silage group compared to the untreated corn silage group (3.65 and 8.28 vs. 3.5 and 8.0%, respectively). The net return for cattle and buffaloes in the MID/1 group was 20129.55 and 5385.45 LE/head/105 days, respectively, as opposed to 17241 LE/head/105 days for cattle and 3757.95 LE/head/105 days for buffaloes in the untreated group. The present results indicated that the treated corn silage with DIM/1 inoculation improved the nutritive value and digestion coefficients, increasing the milk yield and net economic return compared to the untreated corn silage.