Nguyen Xuan Trach, 2004. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 16 (7)

A feeding trial with participation of beef cattle smallholders was conducted in a rice growing village in the countryside of Hanoi to evaluate adoptability of urea treatment of rice straw as feed for growing beef cattle. A total of 40 households were selected and divided into 2 groups, one raising their growing cattle as usually practiced, and the other applying urea-treated rice straw. Results confirmed the positive effect of rice straw treatment: the cattle fed on urea-treated straw ate more and grew faster than those raised as usual. However, following the demonstration trial, farmers in the studied village did not continue to apply the technique due to a number of reasons such as inconvenience in reorganization of routine activities, psychological issues and socio-economic concerns. Overall, too small a scale of cattle production is the main reason for not adopting the technique.