Abstract
Biomass by-products or plant residues from the plantation system would play a crucial role in animal production since the utilization of forages from the underneath tree crops would be less or minimal when the palm oil crop mature. By-products generated from the palm oil system vary, but in relation to the animal production they could be generally categorized into the fibrous by-products and the non-fibrous (concentrate) by-products. Palm oil mill effluent (POME) and palm kernel cake (PKC) are concentrate by-products produced during the processing of palm oil extraction which have great potency to support sheep and goat production, although limiting factors such as contamination of shell and high copper level in PKC need to be considered in their utilization as feed. The fibrous palm oil by-products include oil palm fronds (OPF) and oil palm trunk (OPT) generated from the palm crop trees and oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) and palm pressed fiber (PPF) generated from processing of fresh fruits to yield crude oil. These fibrous by-products cannot meet the metabolisable energy required for high growth rate and for lactation of sheep and goats due to low DM digestibility, low crude protein content, low fermentable carbohydrate and low level of intake. Limited inclusion level in ration should be applied for those by-products to yield an acceptable production level of sheep and goats. Pretreatments (physical, chemical, and biological) gave some improvement in their nutritional qualities, however additional cost of pretreatments need to be considered. In the future, there would be a great challenge for the utilization of those fibrous by-products as animal feed since bioconversion of lignocellulosic materials to products such as chemicals (bioethanol, sugar, and bioplastic), fuels, and organic fertilizers are receiving greater interest. Some comparative advantages of these natural wastes are their relatively low cost, renewable and widespread in nature for used in an industrial operation.
Highlights
It has long been recognized that the integration of ruminants with oil palm plantation is a promising alternative production system to encourage the ruminant production
Palm oil mill effluent contained sufficient amount of Ca and P to meet the requirement for growth, but the Ca/P seems to be too low so that diet based on the POME should be supplemented with calcium to correct this Ca/P ratio to approximately 1.2-2.0
The capacity of nutritional support of palm oil residues and by-products on small ruminant production are various. Those feed ingredients categorized as fibrous feed seemed to be unable to fulfill the metabolizable energy requirement for high growth rate, and lactation, but they were adequate for pregnancy
Summary
It has long been recognized that the integration of ruminants with oil palm plantation is a promising alternative production system to encourage the ruminant production. In the context of this paper, the nutritional support of by-products of oil palm plantation system will be discussed as these are the most abundant and various by-products In this type of animal production system the biomass by-products or plant residues from the plantation system would play a crucial role since the utilization of forages from the underneath tree crops would be less or minimal as the palm oil crop mature. Abdullah et al (2011) reported that about 5070 tonnes of biomass residues could be generated from one hectare of oil palm plantation These by-product biomass are potential bases for developing a ruminant production system integrated with the palm oil plantation system. This paper presented and discussed the nutritional potentials, constraints and challenge of various by-products from the palm oil plantation system as feed for small ruminant production
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