THE EFFICIENCY OF FEEDING CALVES WITH THE ENERGY FODDER ADDITIVE "ZEOLFAT" IN FEED COMPOSITION
The purpose of the research was the effectiveness of feeding energy feed additive (EFA) "ZeolFat" to young cattle. The research objectives were to study chemical composition and nutritional value of EFA "ZeolFat", to develop scientifically based diets for calves, taking into account the introduction of studied feed additive; to determine the effect of EFA "ZeolFat" on physiological state, growth and development of calves; to calculate economic efficiency of the introduction of EFA "ZeolFat" in calves' diets. Scientific and economic experiment of studying the effectiveness of feeding "ZeolFat" was made at mega farm of LLC "Agrocomplex "AK Bars" Arsky district of Tatarstan. The experiment consisted of preparatory (15 days) and research (60 days) periods. For the experiment, the calves of Holstinized black-and-motley breed at the age of 2 months with an average live weight of 80 kg were selected and divided into 3 groups of 10 heads each. All the calves were clinically healthy. The animals were kept in the groups. The difference between the groups was that the calves of the control group received the main diet according to the scheme of growing heifers up to 6 months of age. The calves of experimental groups were fed with the same feed composition as the control ones, but in the 1-st experimental group it slightly differed: every day instead of similar amount of grain, the studied feed additive was given by 200 g, and in the 2-nd - 300 g a head. Adding EFA "ZeolFat" into the composition of mixed feeds for calves increases energetic nutritional value of the diets, the content of raw fat, macro- and microelements. It helps to increase the average daily gain in body weight by 22.0-34.8 % (P < 0.001) and reduced feed costs per 1 kg of live weight gain 26.1-33.0 %. Economic effect on 1 ruble of additional costs is 7.02-7.32 rubles.