Effect of Supplementation Sacharonyces cerevisiae and Leucaena leucocephala on Low Quality Roughage Feed in Beef Cattle Diet

Abstract

The aim of this experiment was to study the effect of adding S. cerevisiae and leaf of L. leucocephala in diet rice straw-based of nutrients digestibility and body weight gain of cattle. The experiment was conducted in Ruminant Nutrition Laboratory of the Faculty of Animal Science, Andalas University, Padang. Experimental design used is a Latin Square Design (LSD) with four treatments and four periods. This experiment used 175.±10.53 kg male ongole crossbreed. The treatments were (A) grass+concentrates (B) rice straw+concentrates (C) was the treatment of B plus 0.5% S. cerevisiae and (D) was the treatment C+15% L. leucocephala. The results showed that the dry matter digestibility of treatment B (61.03%) were significantly lower than treatments A, C and D respectively (68.05, 63.01 and 68.15%) and supplementation of S. cerevisiae was able to improve nutrient digestibility and body weight gain of cattle but still low as compared to control (A). Addition of L. leucocephala in treatment D (850.7 g/day) was able to provide digestibility and body weight gain similar to the control ration (775.7 g/day). It can be concluded that the use of rice straw as a substitute for grass would give the same results with the grass when added 0.5% S. cerevisiae and 15% L. leucocephala.