INTRODUCTION

Animal production and performance depend mostly on the availability of quality feed consumed by the animals. In North Sulawesi where cattle production is gaining popularity, several forages including Napier grass were tested to determine its quality and effects on animals.  However, being low quality forage, its utilization as a single feed for high cattle production is not enough to meet animal’s dietary requirement. There is  a  need  to  supplement  Napier  grass with good quality forages. Gliricidia sepium is abundant in the locality that it is spread from the highland to lowland areas of North Sulawesi.  The legume is initially planted as fence or shade for vanilla or coffee plantation but later utilized as a good feed for animals. Many experiments were done on using Gliricidia sepium as  feed for ruminants.   Chadhokar  (1985) mentioned that G. sepium can be used as animal feed without negative effects, although it contains an anti-nutrient substance. Rangkuti (1983) reported that   G. sepium is an unfavorable feed due to its distinct smell however,  wilting the leaves before feeding to animals increased its palatability (Mathius, 1992).  Supplementation of Gliricidia leaves on pasture increased the body weight of Bali cattle by 570.94 gram/day (Paat et al. 1990).  An increase of 526.8 gram/day in body weight of the animals was likewise obtained by .Sariabang (1991).

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of substituting Napier grass with G. sepium as protein source for beef cattle and to determine its impact to farmers’ income.  

MATERIALS AND METHOD

The study was conducted from 28 August, 1998 to 26 January 1999, and was divided into two periods, the first period was actually a preliminary period (28 August to 12 September, 1998), and the other was collecting period (13 September, 1998 to 26 January, 1999). A total of fourteen local Ongole males having a 250 to 625 kg body weight were used in this experiment.  The animals were divided into two groups based on their body weight, each group consisting of seven animals.   The two treatments given were:  100% Napier grass (RA), and 50% Napier grass + 50% G. sepium (RB). T-test was used to analyze the difference between the two treatments. Napier grass was chopped at 15 to 20 cm, and wilted G. sepium were given to the animals. The animals were fed in the morning and in the afternoon.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1 shows that there was no significant difference on the dry matter intake between the two treatments (P>0.05) however, cattle fed with Napier grass has a lower CP and energy intake compared to cattle fed with Napier + G. sepium (P<0.05). This can be attributed to the high protein and energy contents of RB compared to RA. The influence of protein and energy intake on body weight gain is also shown in Table1. Cattle fed with Gliricidia had a daily body gain of  0.77 kg/day which is significantly higher than those cattle fed with Napier alone (0.52 kg/day).  Feed conversion of cattle fed Gliricidia was also significantly higher (P<0.05).

Table 2 shows the total cost of production and total income incurred for feeding Napier grass: Rp 4,293750 and Rp. 6,109306, respectively. Its BC ratio was  On    the    other    hand,    total    cost   of production incurred for utilizing G. sepium was Rp 4.8 with an income of Rp. 9.14.

CONCLUSION

The  results  presented  confirmed  that substituting G. sepium for Napier grass can further increase the daily body gain in the animals up to 49.77% and farmers’ income can also be increased.