USING A DIGESTAMIN AS A FEED ADDITIVE IN EGYPTIAN BUFFALO COWS (Bubalus bubalis) DIETS

Abstract

لإhis current work was performed to estimate the milk production and composition, blood parameters and some reproductive properties of Egyptian buffalo cows (Bubalus bubalis) fed a digestamin as feed additive. A total of 27 Egyptian buffalo cows were used in this study. The experimental buffaloes aged 4-8 years between the 2nd and 5th parity at late pregnancy (one month pre partum). Three main experimental basal diets were formulated from corn silage, berseem hay, rice straw and concentrate feed mixture containing 14 % CP and digestsmin was added at 0, 0.1, and 0.5% of DM, respectively. The current study showed that, increasing digestamin supplementation in buffalo cows diets increased significantly (P<0.01) average milk yield, total solids, fat, lactose, protein. On the other hand, there was a significant decrease (P<0.01) in milk total solid not fat, ash and somatic cells count by increasing digestamin supplementation to 0.5% level. Increasing digestamin levels also, significant increased (P<0.01) blood total protein, albumin and total lipids. Oppositely, there was a significant decrease (P<0.01) blood plasma globulin, glucose, AST and ALT concentration with increasing digestamin levels. The experimental diets with digestaminrecorded the higher (P<0.01) calf birth, calf birth at weaning, daily weight gain compared to other experimental diets, while the higher body weight and placenta weight of buffalo cows were obtained by control buffalo cows. Generally, there was a significant improved (P<0.01) in reproduction parameters of the experimental buffalo cows by digestamin supplementation. It could be concluded that, digestamin as a feed additive can improve the growth, productive and reproductive performance of Egyptian buffalo cows (Bubalus bubalis). So, it could be used in diets of Egyptian buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) especially with 0.5% of DM.