Hydroponic black gram (Vigna mungo) fodder for goats: Cultivation, chemical composition and short-term feeding acceptance

Hydroponic black gram fodder (HBGF; Vigna mungo) may provide fresh supplemental forage for goats in land-restricted production systems. This descriptive study evaluated the seven-day growth characteristics and chemical composition of HBGF across indoor and outdoor conditions at seed densities of 1 and 2 kg/m², alongside short-term feeding responses. Indoor HBGF at 1 kg/m² was selected for a feeding study of two consecutive five-day periods in eight 50% Boer-crossbred does housed in two pens of four. At Day 7, indoor treatments yielded 5.33–8.50 kg/m² fresh biomass and 23.0–24.5 cm shoot length, compared with 2.10–3.94 kg/m² and 12.0–14.0 cm outdoors (ranges across the two seed densities). The selected composite sample contained 7.7% dry matter (DM) on an as-fed basis and 38.0% crude protein on a DM basis. Among 40 goat-day HBGF exposures, first ingestion was documented in 37, whereas three records indicated no ingestion by observation endpoints (300, 600, or 900 s). Among records with observed ingestion only, daily median first-ingestion times were 25, 36, 5.5, 1, and 1 s across exposure Days 1–5; these conditional summaries do not establish progressive habituation. At 660 min, apparent fresh-weight HBGF disappearance averaged 74.9 ± 19.9% in the HBGF-first pen and 97.6 ± 3.9% in the grass-hay-first pen. Because each feeding sequence was represented by a single pen, DM allocations of HBGF and grass hay differed, and moisture losses were unmeasured, these findings do not determine feed preference or actual intake. The results provide initial data supporting further replicated evaluation of HBGF as a supplemental forage.