Effect of Particle Size of Feed Ingredients on the Hardness of Urea-Molasses-Mineral Block Licks Sihag Zile S., Berwal RS, Sihag Sajjan, Kishore Nand Department of Animal Nutrition, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125004, India Abstract The mustard cake was ground through a hammer mill and unground deoiled rice bran were sieved through sieves number (USES) 8, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 having sieve size 2380, 840, 590, 420, 297, 250 and 210 microns for the determination of particle size, surface area and number of particles/g of materials. Urea-molasses-mineral block (UMMB) licks were prepared using cold process in triplicate for each particle size. The level of molasses (40%), urea (8%), CaO (6%), mineral mixture (6%), phosphoric acid (1%), mustard cake (10%) and deoiled rice bran (29%) were kept constant in each block. Particle size decreased (P<0.05) with the increase in sieve number, whereas surface area and number of particles/material increased (P<0.05) for deoiled rice bran. However, for mustard cake the trend was true upto only 40 number sieve. Addition of urea to molasses decreased (P<0.05) the temperature of molasses. The addition of calcium oxide increased (P<0.05) the temperature which further increased (P<0.05) after the addition of phosphoric acid. The hardness of blocks was maximum (26.08 & 11.08 kg/cm2) with material sieved through 40 number sieve and minimum (12.02 & 4.98 kg/cm2) with the material sieved through 70 number sieve for 1.27 and 2.54 cm penetration, respectively. The texture of the blocks also improved with the decrease of particle size. There was -ve correlation between hardness of blocks and particle size of MC and DRB but the correlation between the hardness of blocks and no. of particles/g MC and DRB was +ve. It was inferred that smaller reed particle size resulted in to harder block licks with good texture. Top Keywords Particle size, Hardness, Lick blocks, UMMB. Top |