Nutrient intake, digestibility and growth performance of Washera lambs fed natural pasture hay supplemented with graded levels of Ficus thonningii(Chibha) leaves as replacement for concentrate mixture

Résumé

The huge livestock resources of the country could not be used to its potential due to lack of good-quality feed throughout the year. Consequently, finding alternative feed supplements for livestock is an important step to sustain livestock production in the country. Ficus thonningii leaf is one of the potential feed resources for ruminants in the area. The experiment was conducted with the objective of evaluating the nutrient intake, digestibility and growth performance of local lambs fed natural pasture hay (NPH)-based diet supplemented with graded levels of Ficus thonningii dried leaves (FTL) and determining of the optimum level for replacing of concentrate mixture (CM). Twenty intact male yearling Washera lambs with initial body weight of 17.06 + 1.43 (mean + SE) kg were used in experiment. The experiment was conducted using randomized complete block design having four replications with five dietary treatments. The treatments were T1 = NPH + 0 g FTL +215 g CM; T2 = NPH + 112.5 g FTL +161.25 gCM; T3 = NPH + 225 g FTL +107.5 g CM; T4 = NPH + 337.5 g FTL + 53.75 g CM; and T5 = NPH + 450 g FTL +0 g CM. Data were analyzed using the general linear model procedures of SAS (version 9.3; 2002). The results showed that FTL are a good source of crude protein (CP) (126.9 g/KgDM) and fibers (377–426 g/Kg DM). Results also showed that supplementation of higher-level FTL significantly ( P < 0.001) increased total DM, OM and fibers intake ( P < 0.001), but no significant difference ( P > 0.05) observed in CP and ME intakes among treatments. Increasing level of FTL supplementation, however, reduced significantly ( P < 0.001) the digestibility coefficient of all nutrients. In terms of ADG, nonsignificant ( P > 0.05) differences were observed in lambs assigned up to 75% replacement of CM. The lowest performance was observed in sole FTL supplementation (T5), despite increased nutrients intake. It was concluded that indigenous fodder tree Ficus thonningii leaves could serve as alternative CP supplement in NPH-based feeding of Washera sheep and can be used to replace CM up to 75% to improve performance.

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