Sustainability and Food Security through Judicial Use of Agricultural Wastes by Technological Intervention for Animal Feeding

Abstract

India has approximately 600 million livestock, which requires almost 1000 million tons of hay or green fodder to sustain present level of productivity. Despite the fact that cereal crop residues are of low feeding value (i.e., poorly available nitrogen, low digestibility with lack of useful minerals) and have low voluntary intakes (around 1.5-2 kg/100 kg mature body weight), they constitute and continue to be an important feed resource for sustainable dairy production in the developing world. Annually >20 million tons of straw biomass is being burnt in the field due to various reasons which is causing serious environmental pollution. On this view feeding trail of urea treated maize straw and huller rice bran and silage of maize feeding in cow was conducted. Urea treated straw feeding was 5.9± 0.3 kg/ day/animal with concentrate and roughage ratio was 40: 60. Total feed intake was 13kg/day/animal. Urea treatment of straw (UTS) costing average 0.84 Rs/kg and feeding of UST decreased the concentrate requirement by 20% saving average 8503Rs/Inter calving period/cow. UTS also prevent the decrease in milk yield by 10% when green fodder was not available. Costing of Silage making was 0.72Rs/kg and feeding of silage increased the milk yield and net income by 10% and 10,516Rs/Animal/ year, respectively. From this study it can be concluded that the dairy farming could be a profitable entrepreneurship when farming with application of urea treatment and silage technology for agricultural wastes.