Biochar as a animal feed supplement - Cambodia

 The work of Preston and Leng continues in Cambodia. I first reported their work back in 2012 from a publication from Lao (shortcut here). There are plenty of other related reports on feed trials which can be found via the 'feed supplement' label.

Rice distillers’ byproduct and molasses-urea blocks containing biochar improved the growth performance of local Yellow cattle fed ensiled cassava roots, cassava foliage and rice straw

Kong Saroeun, T R Preston¹ and R A Leng²

Faculty of Agriculture, Svay Rieng University, Cambodia
kong.saroeun@sru.edu.kh
¹ Centro para la Investigación en Sistemas Sostenibles de Producción Agropecuaria (CIPAV), Carrera 25 No 6-62 Cali, Colombia
² University of New England, Armidale NSW, Australia

Abstract

Twenty male cattle of local Yellow breed with an average body weight of 92.6 kg were allocated in individual stalls to a 2*5 factorial arrangement of treatments with two replicates. The two factors were: biochar inclusion in urea-molasses blocks at levels of: 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8%; and rice distillers’ byproduct (RDB) at zero or 4% in diet DM. The basal diet was ensiled cassava root, dried cassava foliage, rice straw and molasses-urea blocks.
Growth rates of local Yellow cattle were increased when the molasses-urea blocks contained from 2 to 8% biochar (intakes of biochar ranged from 0.05 to 0.33% of diet DM); and when rice distillers’ byproduct was fed at 4% of diet DM. There were related improvements in feed conversion with both additives. There were no additional benefits from combining the two additives.