The Roles of Ammoniation, Direct Fed Microbials (DFM), and Cobalt (Co) in the Creation of Complete Cattle Feed Based from Oil Palm Trunk

Abstract

The continuous increase in population and life style, will result in increased demand for animal protein. Animal protein from beef will be among the animal protein sources of paramount importance due to the large size of beef cattle and the volume of meat it can produce at a time. In Indonesia, comparison between national beef production and consumption reveals a deficit and about 51% of beef are imported from other countries. It is estimated that conditions of this nature will continue to increase every year. One of the problems in the development of ruminants is forage availability since forage serves as the main feed for ruminants. Forage availability in Indonesia is affected by differences in geographical conditions in each region and changes in productive forage land for animal feeds into housing, industry and oil plantations. Indonesia has a high oil palm plantation of about 11,9 million Ha in 2016 and is expected to increase to 14.03 million Ha in 2018. Oil palm plantations need to be rejuvenated (replanting) every 25-30 years. Replanting produces wastes especially in the form of oil palm trunks. The pith of the oil palm trunk can be used as animal feed because it has a high fiber content (44.43%) and can serve as a source of energy for ruminants. However, the oil palm trunk has a limiting factor as the high lignin content (15.41%) causes low digestibility. Therefore, it is important to develop technologies that can reduce the lignin content and increase the digestibility. The purpose of this paper is to review the potentials of oil palm plantation wastes (trucks) as high quality beef cattle feed using ammoniation technology, Direct Fed Microbials (DFM) and addition of the mineral, cobalt (Co) to increase meat production in beef cattle.