Abstract

Background: Practice of feeding agricultural waste to animal, especially sheep, is common in Indonesia. The market demand for organic sheep meat has increased these days. However, the availability of organic feed is an obstacle in organic livestock farming, particularly in Indonesia where agriculture depends heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Feed processing that can reduce pesticide residue levels is a step as an alternative feed provider for beginner organic farmers.
Aim: This research aims to analyze changes in nutritional quality, fiber fraction, digestibility, rumen environmental conditions, and pesticide residue levels of organic and inorganic rations with fermentation treatment. The research treatments were divided into organic and non-organic groups, then each group was divided into the fermented and non-fermented treatments. Fermentation was carried out using Starbio ® for 21 days. All treatment feeds were prepared to meet the needs of sheep with the same composition formula. The ration consisted of rice straw, rice bran, pollard, corn, fish meal, azolla, molasses, salt, and CaCO3. The research data were analyzed and presented in a quantitative descriptive manner.
Result: The results showed that the non-fermented feeds exhibited higher nutritional quality, including the fiber profile and total Volatile Fatty Acid (VFA) compared to fermented feeds. The fermentation process increases the digestibility and reduces pesticide residues, particularly parathion levels up to 0.15 ppm.
Conclusions:This research concludes that the fermentation process increases digestibility and reduces pesticide residues in the ration on both the organic and non-organic source, but does not improve the overall nutritional value of the non-fermented feed.

Key words: nutritional quality; fiber fraction; digestibility; pesticide residue