Abstract
Poster presented at the International Leucaena Conference, 1‒3 November 2018, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Highlights
India’s US$4 billion buffalo meat export industry relies mainly on the slaughter and processing of females that have stopped lactating
Given the contrasting results from previous experiments in India, the objective of this study was to conduct a preliminary assessment of rearing male buffalo calves (MBCs) on leucaena-buffel grass pasture in a semi-arid part of the state of Maharashtra in India
The study consisted of 2 experiments: Experiment 1: 1 December 2015‒27 February 2016 (2 MBCs) Experiment 2: 5 January 2017‒1 August 2018
Summary
India’s US$4 billion buffalo meat export industry relies mainly on the slaughter and processing of females that have stopped lactating. The potential for fattening of male buffalo calves (MBCs) for quality meat production was identified in 1995 in a report of the National Dairy Research Institute (Sharma et al 1995): “Underfed MBCs after weaning are either starved to death or pushed to the slaughterhouse Such malnourished calves, weighing 60 to 80 kg, yield only 30 to 35 kg carcasses of inferior quality. In previous research in India, no ill-effects on the general health of MBCs fed 70% of their dry matter requirements as L. leucocephala were observed, daily bodyweight gains were less than 50% of those of the control group given 3.5 kg concentrates and 3.5 kg wheat straw daily (Gupta et al 1986) This may have been due to reduced dry matter intake, lower levels of serum triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxin (T4) and increased aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) activities in plasma as reported by Gupta (1995). T4 and T3 levels are considered valuable indicators of thyroid function in animals
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