Abstract
An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding batacomplete feed block on body weight of Etawah Grade (EG) dairy goats. Nine yearling intact female EG dairy goats were divided into three groups, three animals in each group and assigned to one of the three dietary treatments. The dietary treatments were natural grass alone (NG), batacomplete feed block alone (BFB), and batacomplete feed block + natural grass (BFB+NG) on dry matter (DM) basis. Batacomplete feed block was made of mixture of concentrate and agro waste (rice straw) with the composition (%) of concentrate 50, roughage 30 and molasses 20. Body weight (BW) was recorded at weekly interval in the morning before feeding and the feeding trial lasted for 55 days. Data on BW was subjected to one-way analysis of variance using Tukey’s test. No differences in body weight of EG dairy goat groups between BFB (19.83 ± 0.29 kg) and NG (21.08 ± 0.35 kg) dietary regimens was observed. However, EG dairy goat groups in BFB+NG dietary regimen showed a higher (23.80 ± 0.70 kg) (p< 0.05) in body weight than in BCF and NG dietary regimens. In conclusion, BFB alone was found to be a very promising diet in substituting NG in (EG) dairy goats fed low-quality crop residues (rice straw), even combination of BFB+NG increased BW of EG dairy goats under the condition of the current experiment.