Effect of dietary sulphur supplementation at graded levels on rumen feed fermentation and microbial profile in buffaloes Choudhary Shilpa, Chaudhary L.C.*, Kala Anju, Agarwal Neeta, Rahman H.1 Animal Nutrition DivisionICAR-IVRI, Izatnagar-243122, India 1ILRI South Asia Regional Office, NASC, New Delhi-110012, India *Corresponding author: lcchaudhary1@rediffmail.com
Online Published on 28 November, 2022. Abstract Choudhary, S., Chaudhary, L.C., Kala, A., Agarwal, N. and Rahman, H. 2022. Effect of dietary sulphur supplementation at graded levels on rumen feed fermentation and microbial profile in buffaloes. Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology, 22: 543–552. The present study was undertaken to observe the effect of supplementation of graded levels of sulphur on in vivo feed fermentation in buffaloes. Four fistulated Murrah male buffaloes with an average body weight of 562+14.21 kg were used in 4x4 Latin square designs. The four treatments were, T1 fed on basal diet; T2, T3 and T4 fed basal diet supplemented with sulphur @ 0.08, 0.13 and 0.2%, resulting total sulphur intake 0.17, 0.25, 0.3 and 0.37% of DMI, in T1, T2, T3 and T4 groups, respectively. There was no impact of sulphur supplementation on daily dry matter intake, rumen microbial enzyme activities like carboxymethyl cellulase, xylanase and amylase, whereas, avicelase activity increased (P<0.05) with increase in sulphur level. The population density of methanogens and Ruminococcus flavefaciens remained unaffected but total bacteria, sulphate reducing bacteria, total fungi, Butyrivibrio fibrisolvens and protozoa increased significantly with sulphur supplementation. The concentration of TVFA and its fractions in the rumen liquor was similar in all the four groups, but ammonia nitrogen was (P<0.01) significantly high in T4 group as compared to rest of the three groups. The results indicated that dietary sulphur supplementation to buffaloes @ 0.2% of DMI had beneficial effect on rumen microbial profile and feed fermentation. Top Keywords Buffalo, Enzyme, Microbial profile, Rumen fermentation, Sulphur. Top |