Effect of different milk feeding strategies on growth, feed-efficiency, bloodimmunoglobulin level and disease incidence of crossbred calves

Abstract

Astudy was undertaken to evaluate the 5 different feeding strategies during the first month of their life followed by control feeding till 84-days of age ,on the growth, feed efficiency, blood imunoglobulin level and incidence of diseases of crossbred calves. The growth trends favoured the calves reared on fresh surplus and diluted colostrum till one month (T3), followed by probiotics supplemented group (T), calves fed sour milk (dahi) diluted with fresh milk (l :1) (T2) and group of calves allowed limited suckling for 5 days of c010strum feeding period (T4 ) all performed better than control group (NDRI feeding practice). Feed conversion efficiency followed the trends of body weight gain. Average concentration of immunoglobulins was maximum in T4 followed by T3, T[ and T2 • The incidence of the disease was lowest in T[ followed by T2 T3and T4 respectively in increasing order. None of the variations, however, were statistically significant.