Growth Performance, Feed Efficiency and Ingestive Behaviour of Barbari Goats Divergently Selected for Residual Feed Intake

Background: Residual feed intake (RFI) is the discrepancy between an animal’s actual feed consumption and the anticipated feed intake, determined by its body weight and growth rate during a specific period of time. It may serve as an effective selection criterion for enhancing feed efficiency in Barbari goats. Methods: Barbari goats (24) of similar age group were taken from Livestock farm complex II (LFC II), SVPUAT, Uttar Pradesh. All the investigational Barbari goats were fed ad libitum on TMR based diet involved of concentrate mixture: green maize fodder: wheat straw in the ratio of 50: 20:30 (on DM basis) for a period of 120 days. TMR were prepared daily by hand mixing separate for each animal and contained 13.96% CP and an estimated metabolizable energy (ME) concentration of 2.41 Mcal/kg DM. Nutrient requirement of Barbari goats were met by feeding as per guidelines of NRC (2001). The TMR were offered at 09:00 h and 18:00 h. The Barbari goats were fed the TMR in such an amount that at minimum 250 g refusals were left daily per goats. Result: It were concluded that Body weight were found to be significant. Expected DMI in low and high RFI goat kids were -0.029 and 0.028 kg/day whereas observed DMI in low and high RFI goat kids were 0.38 and 0.47 kg/day, respectively. ADG were not found non-significant. Out of 24 experimental Barbari goats, 13 Barbari goats were having negative RFI and rest 11 Barbari goats were having positive RFI. The digestibility coefficients for most nutrients were elevated in the low RFI group with respect to high RFI group, the mean values exhibited significant differences across the groups. Significant differences between RFI classes were observed for FCR, FCE, KR and RGR. All the parametres showed that low RFI Barbari goats were more effective in feed utilization than high RFI Barbari goats. With respect to ingestive behaviour FT (min/kg DM), RT (min/kg DM) and CT (min/kg DM) shows significant variation between low and high RFI. So, it can be concluded that low RFI Barbari goats exhibit greater efficiency as they consume less feed, spend reduced time in feeding events and need less metabolisable energy for body maintenance.