Abstract:
The experiment was conducted in Haramaya University beef farm from July 2019- June 2020 with the
objective to investigate milk production, milk composition and calve growth performance(birth
weight,weaning weight and daily weight gain) of ogaden cattle under improved feeding management.
Sixteen lactating cows from early to late lactation stage were used by Randomized complete block
design to receive four treatment diets. The supplementation was given based on cow’s daily milk yields
by partial milking system, which were 0.9 kg, 0.6 kg and 0.3 kg and 0 kg (control) per litre of daily milk
yield as T1, T2 and T3 and T4 in addition to grazing of pasture and night offer of grass hay respectivly.
The ration contains 35%wheat short, 35% wheat bran, 29% noug seed cake and 1% salt as well as
natural pasture from grazing land and standing hay used as basal diets. The study revealed that the
average male and female birth weight were 29.33±1.25 kg and 25.85±0.73 kg respectively. The average
male and female weaning weights were 133.6±3.3 kg and 105.7±4.37 kg respectively. The male and
female Average daily weight gain of calve from birth to weaning were 0.57 kg±0.01 kg and
0.437±0.024 kg/day respectively. Sex of calve was non-significant (P>0.05) on birth weight but
significant effect on (P<0.05) weaning weight and Average daily gain. The Average daily milk yield for
each treatment were 4.52±0.29 kg, 3.92±0.21 kg, 3.44±0.16 kg and 2.8±0.28 kg/day for T1, T2, T3 and
T4 respectively. The lowest and highest milk yield recorded were T4 and T1 respectively. The Cattle in
treatment T1 and T2 were produced higher milk production than T4 by 60% and 40 and have
significant different (P<0.05). The overall average milk compositions were 5.19±0.06% and
3.53±0.03% for milk fat% and milk protein%, respectively. Therefore it can be concluded that high
milk yield, high Average daily weight and high calve weights at weaning age were observed by cattle
high ratio of Concentrate feed (T1)