SUMMARY

T
he current study was conducted to investigate the effect of addition green tea and tetracycline hydrochloride or both of them to growing buffalo rations on digestibility, blood metabolites and animal performance. Twenty buffalo calves of 11-13 months of age weighing 213 ±3.52 kg were divided into 4 groups of 5 animals each. Dried green tea was added in basic diet (control) at levels of 0.5 % (T1), 1 % tetracycline hydrochloride was added to calves in (T2), and 1 % dried green tea and 1% tetracycline hydrochloride was added in (T3) for 4 month experimental period . All animals of these groups were fed 80% of their requirements as concentrate mixture while wheat straw and alfalfa hay was given as roughages ad libitum. The results indicated that dietary supplementation of green tea and tetracycline, or both of them did not significantly (p<0.05) affect on all nutrient digestibility, except EE digestibility that was significantly (p<0.05) lower in group T3 than control. No differences were observed among the supplemented and control groups for blood total proteins, albumin, globulin, ALT and AST. Buffalos fed rations supplemented with tetracycline in T2 or tetracycline with green tea in T3 significantly (P<0.05) decreased serum total cholesterol as compared with those fed control and green tea groups (163.80 and 166.99 vs. 196.17 and 203.31 mg/dl, respectively). The average daily gain, total dry matter intake and fed conversion ratio of growing calves did not affected by supplemented green tea and tetracycline or both of them to rations. In conclusion, incorporating green tea at a rate of 0.5 % and tetracycline at a rate of 1 % in diets of calves was insufficient to improve digestibility and performances of growing buffalo, however mixed them in diet slightly improve performance of buffalo's calves.