Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge about Animal Feed Technologies in Veterinary Medical Education

Aims: An awareness and knowledge retention study w.r.t animal feed technologies was conducted on 115 students of BVSc & AH.

Study Design: It was a pre, post and delayed post test study.

Place of Study: Guru Angad Dev Veterinary &Animal Sciences University Ludhiana India.

Methodology: Ten animal feed technologies were selected for evaluation viz: Mineral mixture (MM), Urea treatment of wheat straw (UTWS), Uromin lick (UL), Silage, Hay, Bypass fat (BF), Bypass protein (BP), Total mixed ration (TMR), Buffer and Probiotics. Students were evaluated for their awareness and knowledge through 50 multiple choice questions at three stages, Pre test: before beginning of Animal Nutrition courses Post test-I: immediately after completion of courses and Post test-II: 6 months after completion of courses.

Results: In Pre test, awareness for Mineral mixture was 19.1 per cent, UTWS 0.9 per cent Silage 19.1 per cent, Hay 20 per cent, Buffers 36.5 per cent and Probiotics 43.5 per cent. None of the students was aware about Uromin lick, BF, Bypass protein and TMR in Pre test. None of the students had knowledge about UTWS, UL, BF, BP and TMR in Pre test (score=0). Awareness and knowledge score raised in Post test-I and declined in Post test-II for all technologies. Mean knowledge score was 0.97/ 50 in Pre test, 38.60 in Post test I and 21.49 in Post test II (statistically significant P<0.01).

Conclusion: Students lost 44.32% knowledge at a gap of six months after its acquisition. At the time of Post test-II students were studying in fourth semester and were going to apply this knowledge after their graduation (3.5 years). By that time the loss of knowledge could be much higher hence retention of knowledge must be focused upon.