Effect of different levels of urea treated date palm leaves on fattening buffalo calves

This experiment has conducted to assess the utilization of urea treated date palm leaves in fattening of buffalo male calves. In order to increase the nutritive value of date palm leaves, it treated by 5 percent of urea. The experiment was done based on Randomized Complete Blocks Design with three treatments and five replications during 138 days. The initial 15 days of experiment was considered as adaptation period. Treatments include three diets containing zero (control), 12.5 and 25 percent (on dry matter basis) of urea treated date palm leaves that replaced part of the forage (bagasse) ration of animals. The diets were included 50 percent forage, 50 percent concentrate. Treated date palm leaves contained 14.67±0.18 percent crude protein and 0.74±0.06 Mcal/Kg metabolizable energy. Experimental measurements included daily feed intake, daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio were 6.81, 7.25, 7.11 kg and 0.845, 0.889, 0.902 kg and 8.24, 8.19, 7.97 respectively. The results showed there were no significant differences between treatments for all factors (P>%5). It was concluded that 25 percent of ration can be used date palm leaves treated by 5 percent of urea in fattening buffalo's calves ration (on dry matter basis).