Vol. 7, Issue 10, Part B (2025)

An investigation was taken up to compare the influence of probiotic, prebiotic and synbiotic supplementation on the cost of feeding and body weight gain of newborn Jaffarabadi buffalo calves (early post-natal stage: 2nd to 13th week and late stage: 14th to 26th week of age). Twenty-four 8-day-old calves were chosen and divided into four groups of six at random: probiotic (T1), prebiotic (T2), synbiotic (T3) and control (C). All calves received restricted suckling plus a basal diet and pelleted concentrate as per ICAR (2013) standards. T1 calves were fed probiotics (L. sporogenes and S. cerevisiae, 5 g/day), T2 received prebiotics (mannan-oligosaccharides, 5 g/day) and T3 were given a synbiotic mix (2.5 g each of probiotic and prebiotic per day). During early post-natal phase, the feeding cost per kg BW gain was ₹36.37±1.23 (control), ₹35.28±0.59 (T1), ₹37.17±0.92 (T2) and ₹ 34.82±0.89 (T3), with no significant difference (p>0.05). The benefit over the control group in terms of reduction in feeding cost /kg b.wt. gain was maximum with synbiotic (4.26%), followed by that with probiotic (2.99%). During early post-natal phase, the feeding cost per kg of BW gain was lowest in T2 (₹97.78 ± 2.76), while control had the highest cost (₹103.21 ± 3.50). The benefits over control in terms of reduced cost per kg body weight gain was maximum with prebiotic (8.73%), followed by synbiotic (7.15%) in least in magnitude with probiotic feeding (5.99%). However, the difference in feeding cost per kg body weight gain was non-significant (P>0.05) during the experiment. For the entire period i.e., up to 6 months of age, overall feeding cost per kg BW gain was ₹68.78 for control, ₹65.68 for T1, ₹65.41 for T2 and ₹65.19 for T3, with no significant difference (p>0.05). The benefit over the control group in terms of reduced feeding cost per kg BW gain was for all supplemented groups: 4.50% for T1, 4.89% for T2 and 5.21% for T3. Thus, while the addition of probiotics, prebiotics or synbiotic did numerically alter the cost per kg of BW gain, there was a slight decrease in feeding cost per calf across all treatment groups as compared to the control, maximum (5.21%) being with synbiotic feeding, followed by almost same, 4.5 to 4.9% with prebiotic or probiotic alone feeding.