Crop Residue Based TMRs: An Effective Approach for Feeding Ruminants

The locally available crop residues have been explored and incorporated into total mixed rations (TMR) or complete rations for feeding of ruminants in tropical countries like India. TMR feeding has gained importance in the recent days because of depletion of grazing lands, escalating demand for concentrate feed ingredients. This led to the exploration of feeds for livestock which do not compete with human consumption. Hence the present work has been taken up with an objective of using locally available crop residues viz. maize stover, red gram straw and black gram straw for preparation of TMR for feeding of buffaloes and sheep. The nutrient digestibility, rumen fermentation pattern, in vitro, in situ and in vivo digestibility of the TMRs had been studied. Further, the impact of TMRs have been studied on the improved milk production in buffaloes and meat production in sheep. The effect of TMRs have been compared with the conventional method of feeding buffaloes and sheep. The present study envisaged that feeding TMRs to buffaloes and sheep improved the production of milk and meat economically.This proved to be a novel approach of feeding ruminants.