The Usage of Rice Straw as Roughages for Cost Reduction in Deer Farming

Abstract

           Deer farming business is one of the alternative agriculture for agriculturists who have been already invested with other agricultures. These people who are interested in deer farming investment  will consider the amount of money invested in food for feeding deer as the first priority. Ramkhamhaeng University Deer Farm researched whether low cost roughages would affect the productivity which we used the body weight as the indicator or not in order to be the basic information for the investment in deer farming business. Sixty Rusa deer and 60 Sika deer, aged 3 years with similar body weight were experimented. Among 60 deer of each species were divided into 2 groups, group 1: 30 deer and group 2: 30 deer. Both groups have been fed with concentrated feed/ fermented Napier grass/ molasses/ and dry Pangola grass for 6 months from April – September 2018. The experiments were started in October 2018 : group 1 of each species was fed with the same food as before but group 2 of each species was fed with concentrated feed/ fermented Napier grass/ molasses/ and rice straw for 6 month from October 2018 – March 2019. The body weight of 120 deer were measured before and after the experiments. The results showed that the body weight of both Rusa deer and Sika deer group 2 were not significantly different from group 1 in spite of the difference of food price. A Rusa deer of group 1 consumed 13.05 Bahts /day and a Sika deer of group 1 consumed 11.03 Bahts/day. After the experiment of changing food from dry Pangola grass to rice straw of group 2, a Rusa deer of group 2 consumed 7.99 Bahts /day and a Sika deer of group 2 consumed 6.98 Bahts/day. These show that the usage of low cost roughages to feed deer does not affect the productivity of deer.