Effect of feeding sulphate reducing bacteria along with sulphur on growth performance, nutrient utilization and methane emission in goats

Abstract Competitive relationship exist between the sulphate reducing bacteria and the methanogens in the anaerobic environment including rumen for hydrogen where sulphate is not limiting for the growth and consequently inhibit the enteric methane emission as thermodynamically energetic of sulphate reduction (∆Go= -21.1 KJ/mole of H2) is more favourable than methanogenesis (∆Go= -16.9 KJ/mole H2). To validate this hypothesis a study was designed to investigate the effect of supplementation of sulphate reducing bacteria (SRB) as microbial feed additives alone or along with sulphur (as sodium sulphate) on methane production, live weight gain, feed intake, nutrient digestibility and energy metabolism in goats. The SRB used as microbial feed additives were isolated from goat rumen. The experiment was conducted on growing kids (n=36, 5-6 months of age) with average body weight of 10.08 ± 0.21 kg, divided in six groups (n=6). The six treatments were control fed basal diet (T1), SRB 0.5ml/kg BW (T2), sulphur (as sodium sulphate) 0.095% of DMI (total sulphur level in the diet 1.5 times the requirement) (T3), sulphur (as sodium sulphate) 0.095% of DMI + SRB 0.5ml/kg BW (T4), sulphur (as sodium sulphate) 0.19% of DMI (total sulphur level in the diet 2 times the requirement) (T5) and sulphur (as sodium sulphate) 0.19 % of DMI + SRB 0.5ml/kg BW (T6). Duration of study was 150 days and the goats were fed as per ICAR (2013) feeding standard. Methane (CH4) production (l/kg DMI) was reduced by 11.8 % (P=0.05) in T6 where sulphur (@ 0.19% DMI) was supplemented along with SRB4 (@ 0.5 ml/kg BW) as compared to T1 (un-supplemented group). However, the dry matter intake (DM), total weight gain (TG), average daily gain (ADG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), excretion of purine derivatives (allantoin, uric acid, xanthine and hypoxanthine) and digestibility of organic matter (OM), dry matter (DM), ether extract (EE), crude protein (CP), acid detergent fibre (ADF) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) remained comparable (P>0.05) among all the groups. The experimental data revealed that feeding of SRB as an microbial feed additives along with sulphur (as sodium sulphate) is capable in reducing enteric CH4 emission without any adverse effect on rumen fermentation and digestibility of the nutrients.