Co-grazing is a common practice under many range conditions. The main advantage of co-grazing is to fully utilize the vegetation sources by taking advantage of the different preferences among animals towards plant species and parts. Hence, this study aimed to establish if co-grazing camels with cattle would lead to changes in the biochemical characteristics in the rumen contents of cattle, and result in different fermentation end products. Rumen contents were collected from two groups of animals at two different locations, the Runnymede Cattle Station at Richmond in northern Queensland, and the Meramist abattoir at Caboolture in Queensland. For the Richmond site, two groups of animals were sampled via stomach tube; cattle co-grazed with camels (n=6) and cattle grazed alone (n=6). For the Caboolture site, foregut contents from three groups of animals were sampled post mortem; camels co-grazed with cattle (n=6), cattle cograzed with camels (n=6), and camels grazed alone (n=6). The ratios of camel to cattle for the Richmond and the Caboolture sites were 1:49 and 1:14 respectively. These ratios were considered adequate for microbial transfer to occur.Foregut fluid samples from all animals were used to inoculate a pre-reduced medium containing Mitchell grass (Astrebla lappacea), Flinders grass (Iseilema spp.), or Lucerne hay (Medicago sativa). Measurements of gas production, volatile fatty acids, and dry matter digestibility were carried out following 48 or 96 h of in vitro incubation at 39 °C.Inocula from cattle co-grazed with camels from Richmond resulted in greater (P< 0.05) dry matter digestibility for Mitchell grass than cattle grazed alone and produced greater (P< 0.05) amounts of n-butyrate. On the other hand, inocula of camels co-grazed with cattle from Caboolture had higher in vitro dry matter digestibility for Mitchell grass and shared the potential for higher dry matter digestibility with cattle co-grazed with camels for lucerne hay. Camels co-grazed with cattle also produced more (P<0.05) n-Butyric acid in the Mitchell grass treatment compared to groups of camels grazed alone and cattle co-grazed with camels. The results from the biochemical analysis suggested that co-grazing may change the ecosystem of the foregut in a number of beneficial ways.A microbiological analysis was carried out to investigate the structure of the bacterial community in each group of animals with high throughput sequencing of 16s rRNA gene using 454 pyrosequencing technology. Using an open source software computational program provided by Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology (QIIME), not only was it possible to identify all microbial species within the foregut fluid samples but also it was possible for all data to be analysed and compared systematically.Further analyses to identify the different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with a similarity threshold of 97% allowed the assessment of observed species (OTUs); species richness (Chao1); and phylogenetic diversity (PD) whole tree metric for each foregut fluid sa...

Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp is Fabaceae family (alt. Leguminosae). It has a different common name the most common is congo pea, pigeon pea or yellow dahl. The morphological of the plant is an annual or short-lived perennial shrub or small tree with leaves trifoliate, alternate, set in a spiral around the stem, flowers usually yellow and a flat pods (5–9 cm long, 12–13 mm wide, containing 2–9 oval to round seeds varying in color from light beige to dark brown) that can grow up to one to four meters and usually with an erect woody at the base. Cajanus cajan primarily grown as a grain crop for seed for human consumption with over 4 million hectares cultivated worldwide. The foliage may be cut and fed to livestock fresh or conserved. This study was conducted to evaluate the growth and yield of Cajanus cajan forage at different cutting intervals of regrowth defoliation. The seeds were collected from South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The research was conducted in Field 15 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. The regrowth was harvested after 3 months plot establishment period. The regrowth of Cajanus cajan forages at 4-weeks, 8-weeks and 12-weeks old were harvested to determine the quantity and quality. The results indicate that the different cutting intervals had significant effect (P<0.05) on plant height (68, 111, and 137 cm), fresh weight (38, 142, and 192 g), dry matter (14, 52.5, and 71.2 g), leaf to stem ratio (3.0, 1.3, and 1.8 g) and yield of Cajanus cajan forage (1.5, 5.5, and 7.5 ton/ha/cutting). The older cutting age had increased the yield. However, the best cutting interval of Cajanus cajan as ruminant feed for optimal production was 8 weeks (33 ton/ha/year).

Used cooking oil (UCO) is a waste, and creates environmental issues due to its hydrophobic property. UCO, with its high content of fatty acid, can be used as source material for animal feed. However, high unsaturated fatty acid in UCO is harmful to the ruminant’s microflora. This can be resolved by transforming UCO into functional product such as ruminant’s protected fat (PF). In the present work, the production of used cooking oil protected fat (UCOPF) using fusion method via saponification process was investigated. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to evaluate the effect of calcium oxide concentration (CaO), initial temperature (iTemp.), and percentage of water (H2O) on the solidification score and free fatty acid (FFA) content of PF. Results showed that all the studied parameters significantly affected the responses. The coefficient of determination (R2) for solidification score and FFA were high at 0.9433 and 0.9599, respectively. The optimum condition to produced UCOPF by fusion method was CaO (20%), iTemp. (80°C), and percentage of water (30%), which yielded solidification score and FFA of 5.33 ± 0.53 and 0.85 ± 0.07%, respectively. The FFA content of the optimised PF was lower than permitted; thus, it can be used as animal supplement. In conclusion, the UCO can be converted into PF by using calcium fusion method. However, the property and stability of the produced PF should be assessed prior to commercialisation.