Vol. 9, Issue 2, Part E (2024)

Background: Buffalo milk constitutes major part of milk production in India. It is preferred for due to the presence of more nutrients. Further, most of the buffaloes reared in India belong to small and marginal farmers and most of the feed is given as roughage. WB 02 is a wheat crop variety produced by ICAR-IIWBR, Karnal, Haryana whose grain contains higher amount of zinc and iron. The present experiment compares the effect of replacing conventional straw with the WB 02 straw.

Methods: Twelve Murrah buffaloes were used in this experiment, and they were split into two groups, Control (T₀) and Treatment (T₁) according to their body weight, parity, and past milk production. Based on the ICAR (2013) guideline, feeding was sustained for a duration of 90 days. The concentrate combination, oat fodder, and wheat straw were fed to both groups in the following proportions: 50:15:35 (based on dry matter). Nevertheless, biofortified wheat variety straw was used in the treatment group and regular wheat straw was used in the control group.

Results: When the weekly composition of milk in both groups was evaluated, non-significant differences (p>0.05) were seen. According to the study, providing Murrah buffaloes with WB 02 straw had no effect on the composition of their milk as compared to feeding them a regular diet based on straw.