BODY WEIGHT GAIN, FEED CONVERSION AND FEED COST OF KOREAN NATIVE GOATS FED CORN-MANURE SILAGES

This study was carried out to investigatigate feed cost of com-manure silage and growth performance of Korean native goats which was fed com-manure silage. The average weight about 11.6 kg of twenty one Korean native male goats (4 months used to determine the effect of the feeding trial. The goats were individually reared in metabolism cages and fed diet daily of 2% of the body weight on the dry matter basis. The treatments were divided into whole crop com silage(CS silage), whole crop com ensiled with cage layer manure (CLM; Com-manure silage or MS silage) and whole crop com silage supplemented with urea at feeding time (US silage). The content of crude protein, lactic acid and the ratio of ammonia nitrogen to total nitrogen ($NH_3-N/Total$ N) in MS silage were increased from 7.7 to 14.9%, 5.7 to 7.5% and 8.2 to 16.6%, and the differences were significantly (p < 0.05) different in all observations. Total body weight gain of those goats for 90 days was 6.0 kg (66.7 g/day; MS silage 4.3 kg (47.8 g/day; US silage) and 3.9 kg (43.4 g/day; CS silage), and feed conversion of MS silage (5.98) for 90 days was increased by far the best in the other groups and decreased about 30% in proportion to CS silage. Feed cost per 1 kg MS silage (1,606 won) was the lowest (p < 0.05) in the body weight gain and cut down expenses than fed CS silage by 37% of feed cost.