TITLE:
Effect of Summer Supplementary Feeding on Cattle Performance in Low Rainfall Grassland Savanna, South Darfur, Sudan
AUTHORS:
Abu Bakr Omer Ismail, Yousif Rizggalla Sulaiman, Faisal Awad Ahmed, Hafiz Abdalla Mohamed Ali
KEYWORDS:
Body Weight, Condition Score, Groundnut Cake, Groundnut Haulm, Heart Girth and Stover
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Animal Sciences,
Vol.4 No.5,
October
29,
2014
ABSTRACT: In a tropical ranch of animal production, which was divided by fire lines into 20 equal grazing paddocks of one mile square each, a grazing experiment was conducted as controlled rotational grazing with forty-five (45) cross-bred Sudanese improved Baggara cattle which were divided into four feeding systems (groups). A drop in condition scores of the farm cattle stock herd was treated during dry summer by supplementary feeding with four types of supplements to investigate the changes in average body weight changes, heart girth and condition scores, through dry summer, wet summer and winter seasons. The results showed that, animals of group three (G3) which supplemented with groundnut cake performed better in all body parameters under study when compared with group one (G1) and group two (G2) being supplemented with groundnut haulm, Stover respectively and group four (G4) which was kept under natural grazing as control group (Natural grazing alone) which reveals the worse body measurement traits performance under study. The effect of seasonal changes showed a significant difference (P