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अमूर्त

Effects of Supplementing Cactus Cladode and Acacia Senegal Branches on Intake, Digestibility and Body Weight Gain of Tigray Highland Sheep Fed Barley Straw

Han X.P, Hubbert B, Hubbert ME and Reinhardt CD

The primary objective of the experiment was to evaluate the effect of supplementing different proportions of dried cactus cladode (CC) and Acacia senegal branches (ASB) fed barley straw (BS) on feed intake, digestibility, and average daily gain (ADG) using twenty four yearling male Tigray highland sheep. Experimental sheep were blocked in to six blocks of four animals based on initial body weight and randomly assigned to one of the four treatments. Treatments were ad libitum feeding of BS+60 g noug seed cake (T1, control), and T2, T3 and T4 were supplemented with 240 g CC+80 g ASB, 160 g CC+160 g ASB, and 80 g CC+240 g ASB DM/day, respectively in addition to T1 ration. The experiment was consisted for 90 days of feeding trial and 7 days of digestibility trials. The inclusion of ASB was significantly increased CP content of cactus cladode by 28.2, 45.1 and 54.5% for T2, T3 and T4, respectively. Neutral detergent fiber (67.6%), acid detergent fiber (57.6%) and acid detergent lignin (18%) of acacia senegal branches also decreased by 20.2, 13.7 and 11.4%; 25.4, 16.8 and 11.1%; 10.7, 5.0 and 3.6%, respectively in those treatment through the inclusion of cactus cladode. the CP intake, ADG and Feed conversion efficiency were significantly increased (P<0.05) with increasing proportion of ASB in the foliage mixture. It can be concluded that supplementation with high proportion of ASB in the mixtures has a tendency to improve growth performance of sheep.