Zoo-technical responses of growing cattle fed sun-dried brewers’ spent grain at 20% of dietary inclusion

Abstract

Abstract Background Agro-industrial by-products are gaining immense significance in animal feeding as a plausible solution to curtail ever-increasing prices of traditional feedstuffs, which may in turn stave off the skewed profit margin in dairy production. To this end, the present experiment sought to evaluate the effect of sun-dried brewers’ spent grain (BSG)—a by-product of distillery industry—as a dietary component on the performance outcome in cattle. Ten growing male Jersey crossbred cattle were stratified into two groups of control (T1) and treatment (T2) based on comparable body weight (BW: 59.3 ± 5.9 kg). Animals in group T1 were fed a basal diet comprising of approximately 15% green oats, 45% paddy straw and 40% concentrate mixture, whilst that of T2 contained 20% (w/w) sun-dried BSG, equally substituting concentrate mixture with the proportion of forage components similar to that of T1 on dry basis. Results 105 days of experimental feeding revealed that the intake and apparent digestibility of nutrients did not differ between two groups. However, animals in group T2 exhibited a greater (P < 0.05) average daily gain in BW along with an improvement (P < 0.05) in feed conversion ratio over group T1. Additionally, diet offered to group T2 relatively proved 20% more economical than T1. Furthermore, on comparing cost/kg crude protein furnished by a range of conventional ingredients, BSG appeared third in the rank, only next to mustard (rapeseed) de-oiled cake and de-oiled rice bran. Conclusion Based on these results, it is concluded that sun-dried BSG could be incorporated at 20% in the diet for leveraging a greater growth performance in cattle, while also realising a distinct reduction in feed outlay.