Effect of Micronutrients Supplement on Nutrient Utilization and Growth Performance in Pre-ruminant Calves

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to assess the effect of micronutrients supplement (MS) on the nutrient utilization and growth performance in pre-ruminant calves. The sixteen day old crossbred calves (body weight 24.50 ± 0.56 kg) were randomly allocated into two dietary treatments; control (C) and treatment (T) groups. Diets were same for both groups and in addition to diet micronutrients supplement was given to individual calf of treatment group. The supplementation of MS in the diet of crossbred calves did not affect the intake and digestibility coefficients of CP, EE, NDF and ADF. Over all body weight changes and feed conversion efficiency did not differ significantly between groups but average daily gain (g) was significantly (P<0.05) higher in T group as compare to control (C) group. Thus it was concluded that supplementation of micro-nutrients in pre-ruminant calves showed significant improvement in average daily gain while the intake, feed efficiency and digestibility of nutrients were comparable between the groups.