Effect of Supplementation with Non-Conventional Feeds on Feed Intake and Body Weight Change of Washera Sheep Fed Urea Treated Finger Millet Straw

Abstract

This study was conducted at Bure Agricultural college during 2010. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the effect of supplementation with noug seedcake (NSC), wheat bran (WB) and their mixtures on feed intake and live weight change of growing lambs. Twenty five growing Washera lambs with initial live weight of 17.8 +1.72 (mean + SD) were used in feeding trial were used. The lambs were blocked based on their initial live weight and randomly assigned to one of the five treatments, giving five animals per treatment. The treatments consisted of feeding of sole urea treated finger millet straw as control (T1) and supplementation of the basal diet with mixtures of NSC & WB at 100:0, 70:30, 30:70 and 0:100% for T2, T3, T4 and T5, respectively. The level of supplementation was 300 g/d on dry matter (DM) basis. Supplementation of NSC, WB and their mixtures significantly increased the intake of total DM (743-843 g/d) and total CP (99–134.34 g/d) when compared to control (589.49g/d) and (49.4 g/d) respectively. Lambs in control group consumed higher urea treated millet straw DM (589.49g/d) as compared to the supplemented treatments (443-543 g/d).Supplementation of urea treated millet straw with concentrates (T2-T5) promoted higher daily weight gain which ranged between 50.2-71.3 g/day. Among the supplemented treatments, lambs supplemented with the higher proportion of WB (70%) in T4 and sole WB (100%) in T5 gained more weight than the lambs in T2 and T3. Therefore, it could be concluded that supplementation of sole WB (T5) and mixtures of 70% WB + 30% NSC (T5) could be recommended as optimal level for better utilization of nutrients and animal performance on a given basal diet.