Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Department of Animal and Poultry Nutrition, Faculty of Animal Science, Gorgan University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, Gorgan, Iran
Abstract
In order to investigate the use of non-steamed flaked and milled barley in Holstein suckling calves, 12 suckling female calves with an age of about 20-25 days and an average initial body weight of 44±2.7 kg were used. This research was conducted for 35 days with two treatments and six replications. The treatments included: 1- starter diet containing milled barley, 2- starter diet containing non-steamed flaked barley. The results showed that calves received non-steamed flaked barley had better final weight, weight changes, daily weight gain, dry matter consumption and feed conversion ratio than calves received milled barley(P<0.05).there was a significant difference in the eating, rumination, and resting behavior of calves among the treatments received milled barley and non-steamed flaked barley(P<0.05); These factors increased with the consumption of milled barley. However, the fecal consistency score the number of calves with diarrhea, and the average number of days with diarrhea were not affected by the use of milled barley and non-steamed flaked barley, the results of the present study showed that the blood glucose concentration of calves received non-steamed flaked barley was higher (79.44 mg/dl) than of calves consuming milled barley (71.09 mg/dl) (P<0.05); But it had no significant effect on the concentration of triglyceride cholesterol, urea, total protein, albumin, globulin and their ratio, based on the results of this research, barley processing, as a non-steamed flaked barley, while increasing the initial ration consumption, daily weight gain, improved the final weight and also did not have a negative effect on blood parameters.
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