INFLUENCE OF ORGANIC ACIDS AND FERMENTABLE CARBOHYDRATES ON FEEDING VALUE OF UREA TREATED WHEAT STRAW IN BUFFALOES

Fibrous crop resides, because of their abundant availability, have received much att4entin as ruminal feed in developing countries. However, because of their low digestibility, they limit intake and thus impede ruminant productivity (sarwar et al., 2002). Ammonitation through urea treatment of these crop residues has improved their digestibility, nitrogen(N) content and thereby increased consumption (Sarwar et al., 1994). However, in urea treated fibrous crop resides about 70% of NH3 released from urea by the action of urease, escaped to the environment thus rendered the process uneconomical and caused environmental pollution(Taiwo et al., 1995). Further, most of the retained N in the urea treated fibrous material was held as water soluble (Dryden and Leng, 1998) and thus rapidly release in the rumen and cause asynchrony of nutrient at ruminal and cellular levels. It was argued that at low pH fee NH3 in urea treated fibrous material was converted to NH+4 that very reactive and had tendency to bind with the fiber, thereby improved fiber bound N and resulted in slower release of NH3 at ruminal level (Borhami et al., 1982