Effect of feeding of Morinda citrifolia fruit juice on the biophysical parameters of healthy as well as mastitis-affected cow milk

Abstract

The present study was conducted to assess the effect of Morinda citrifolia fruit juice on milk characteristics of healthy as well as mastitis-affected dairy cow. A total of 25 adult dairy cows were selected out of which 13 were healthy and 12 were found affected with sub-clinical mastitis. M. citrifolia fruit juice was fed to dairy cow at the rate of 100 ml/day/animal orally. The average pH of the normal milk and mastitis-affected milk was 6.6090.12 and 7.290.17, respectively. The feeding of M. citrifolia juice significantly (pB0.05) lowered the pH of mastitisaffected milk to 6.5490.07. The EC of mastitis-affected milk lowered significantly (pB0.05) after feeding of M. citrifolia fruit juice. The total bacterial count in the mastitis milk also decreased significantly (pB0.05) from 5.1590.03 108 to 2.5490.03 108 cfu/ml after feeding of M. citrifolia juice. Morinda feeding decreased the total protein concentration in the mastitis milk significantly (pB0.05) to 21.1390.93 mg/ml. It could be concluded that the feeding of M. citrifolia fruit juice to dairy cows showed improvement in the quality and biophysical parameters of milk of mastitis-infected dairy animals.