Supplementing Kacang goats with urea mineral mollases blocks (UMMB) during the dry season in West Timor

Abstract

Bali cattle and goats are important income sources for smallholder farmers in West Timor. Supplementary feeding however, has not been widely adopted, probably because of the costs of supplements. To increase the rate of adoption of this technology and to test two types of urea mineral molasses blocks (UMMB1 from Java and UMMB2 from Timor), an on-farm research study was conducted from September to December 2004 using 180 goats (of varying ages and sex) and involving 22 goat owners in two districts in the South-Centre-Timor Regency. Control animals were owned by people within the same village whose goats had access to identical feed resources outside the night shelter/fences as the supplemented goats. Animals were allotted into a completely randomized design with 3 treatments (Control, UMMB1, and UMMB2) and 4 replications for each age group. Data were analysed using analysis of variance.