Evaluation of Rumen Protected Fat Prepared by Fusion Method

An experiment was chalked out to prepare rumen protected fat viz. calcium salts of long chain fatty acids (LCFA-Ca) by fusion method from palm fatty acid oil (PO), rice bran fatty acid oil (RBO) and mixed fatty oil (MO). The fat% of the PO (97.80) and RBO (96.46) were similar. The iodine number of RBO (75.18) was higher than the PO (49.67). Twenty types of rumen protected fat each of PO and RBO were prepared by treating with technical grade calcium hydroxide under specific conditions viz. with and without sulphuric acid, with and without steam and at different treatment times (5, 10, 20, 25 and 30; minutes). Studies indicated that use of acid was beneficial to obtain more FFAs from the oils for higher yield of rumen protected fat, steam had no impact and 30 minutes treatment time was optimum for the preparation of rumen protected fat. The percent mean values of yield, fat and total ash of the RBO based with acid and without steam at 30 minutes treatment time rumen protected fat was 78.09, 76.00 and 15.58, respectively, and was statistically similar with the respective mean values of all other types of rumen protected fat. There was no significant difference in the Ca% and DM, OM and fat undegradability values of the different types of rumen protected fat and were ranged from 4.93 to 5.88; 84.30 to 89.02; 82.88 to 89.95 and 84.23 to 87.49, respectively. For the preparation of rumen protected fat for practical purpose, 30 minutes treatment time, use of sulphuric acid, without steam should be preferred. Besides, between PO and RBO, the RBO was preferred due to its higher degree of unsaturation of fatty acids.