Effect of Jaggery, Mineral Supplementation, and Whey on Physical Quality of Sorghum Silage

The present research “Enrichment of sorghum silage using jaggery and mineral mixture” was conducted at Livestock Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairy science, College of Agriculture, Latur during the year 2022-2023. Total twelve treatments were studied namely T0 T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T11respectively. The fodder crop were chaffed into small pieces preferably 2-4 cm length using a chaff cutter. The bags were packed in such a way that neither air enters into the bags nor the gas comes out from the bags. The entire surface of polythene bags was covered with straw or any other dried material upto 6-8 inches. To improve the nutritional quality of ensiling materials (2%) Mineral mixture was evenly sprinkled and thoroughly mixed over the chopped fodders in all treatments. Jaggery (2%) was diluted with water in a 2:1 ratio for easy application. While, whey (2%) was added as an inoculant to improve the fermentation quality. The fermentation process was done upto 60 days and silage obtained was subjected to the physical and chemical analysis.

The result revealed that the physical quality of sorghum silage was significantly affected due to the effects of additives which showed the highest colour score the highest colour score (1.90 out of 2) was obtained in T3, T7 and T11 . However the lowest score (0.80 out of 2) was recorded in T0 (Control). The Sensory score for odour among all the treatments was highest score (12.08 out of 14) in T3 and the lowest score (9.05 out of 14) was recorded in T4 (Control). Whereas, the texture score in T1 and T5 was highest (3.75 out of 4) and lowest (3.22 out of 4) in T10 among all the treatments. In terms of DLG, the quality class showed that most treatment produced good quality of silage, while, treatment T1, T3 and T9 were classified as very good and T5 as medium. In all the treatments, T9 was recorded as having the highest DLG score on basis of average score (17.57), whereas T5 (13.18) had the lowest DLG score.