Assessment of Forage Production and Its nutritional Values for Local Cattle Farming in Rangelands of Kupang Regency Indonesia

The rangeland potentials in Kupang regency, Indonesia, were evaluated by determining forages distribution, forages nutritional value, and growth performance of the cattle grazed or fed with forages grown in the area. Several rangelands namely Amarasi, Mamar Kering, and Selobua were evaluated for its forages’ distribution from November to December 2015, while the reared cattle growth performance was observed for 12 months, starting from May 2016 to April 2017. A purposive sampling method was done to determine the forage distribution and a total of 22 cattle that fed in the areas were evaluated for its growth performances. The observed variables include forages distribution, nutritional value of the forages and cattle ration, feed intake (FI) and average daily gain (ADG) of the cattle. The forages distribution data were analyzed descriptively, while forages nutritional value and cattle growth were analyzed with nested ANOVA followed with LSD test to determine significant differences. The results showed that Mamar Kering had more plant species (77 species) compared to Amarasi (62 species) and Selobua (53 species) rangelands. The combination of Amarasi and Mamar Kering provides better forage availability (91.64%) compared to individual rangeland utilization (58.67 to 79.8%). The results also showed that different rangelands had a highly significant difference (P0.05) difference was found for crude protein, feed intake and ADG of the cattle. Moreover, the highest ADG cattle were found for Amarasi and Mamar Kering which reached 0.30 kg/cattle/day. The research concludes that the combination of Amarasi and Mamar Kering rangelands provide higher forage availability and better cattle growth compared to individual or another rangelands combination, with adjustment of forages and cattle ratio should be done to achieve efficient cattle production.