A FOOD EXPERIMENT WITH CITRUS PEEL, MOLASSES AND YEAST IN DUTCH-ARGENTINIAN CALVES IN TUCUMÁN

Abstract

Citrus peels are waste of the citric industry. The large amount of such waste represents a real ecological issue. As a solution to this problem, it has been formulated an aliment for animals which has as its primary component orange peel. The diets were evaluated nutricionally, microbiologically and energetically. This paper shows the figures which belong to an experiment with cattle where the diets designed were used. The diet consisted of: wet orange peel, corn, cream of yeast, molasses, and urea.
The trials were carried out for twelve weeks, between the months of April and July in the cattle area of Zarate, Trancas Department, located in the Province of Tucumán, Argentina. For these trials, four calves of dutch-argentinian breed, clinically healthy, with sixty days of age and weighting 85kg in average, were used. Two homogeneous groups were formed to test the following treatments:
1) Experimental treatment: designed diet and natural forage
2) Witness treatment: commercial balanced food consisting of cereals and natural forage.
It was measured the daily increase in weight through fifteen days weighing. The figures showed that the increase in weight of the animals in treatment, and of the animals in the witness treatment was similar. It is considered that a waste of the citric industry of Tucumán can be used together with molasses and cream of yeast, in the formulation of diets for feeding cattle, and thus to reach an increase in weight similar to the one gained by the animals fed with their ordinary diet