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Abstract
ABSTRACT This trial aimed to evaluate the effects of thyme essential oils (EO) on rumen parameters, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance in wethers fed with high-concentrate diet. Twenty rumen-cannulated wethers were blocked according to body weight (BW= 64.0±2.1kg), and received one of the following treatments: 25mg of monensin/kg of dry matter (DM; MON) or doses of thyme EO (1.25, 2.50 or 3.75g/kg of DM). The diet was composed of 90% concentrate. Thyme EO was composed mainly by thymol (46.6% of DM) and p-cymene (38.9% of DM). The nutrient intake and apparent digestibility were similar among treatments. The inclusion of 3.75g of thyme EO tended (P= 0.07) to increase butyrate compared to MON and 1.25OE and wethers fed with 1.25g of thyme EO tended (P= 0.07) to decrease ruminal pH on the 14th day compared to MON. The treatments did not affect acetate:propionate ratio, total short chain fatty acids (SCFA) and nitrogen retention. Results from this study suggest that adding thyme EO to high-concentrate diets may be used as an alternative to monensin as feed additive in feedlot lambs.
Highlights
The feed additives used in ruminant nutrition aim to increase energy efficiency in ruminal fermentation, resulting in an increase in animal performance
It is known that compounds present in thyme essential oils (EO) have antimicrobial properties, which may allow its use as an alternative to ionophores (Lis-Balchin and Deans, 1997; Cristani et al, 2007)
There are few in vivo studies evaluating thyme EO as feed additive (Khorrami et al, 2015)
Summary
The feed additives used in ruminant nutrition aim to increase energy efficiency in ruminal fermentation, resulting in an increase in animal performance. It is known that compounds present in thyme essential oils (EO) have antimicrobial properties, which may allow its use as an alternative to ionophores (Lis-Balchin and Deans, 1997; Cristani et al, 2007). Based on these characteristics, the potential of thyme EO as a rumen manipulator has been extensively studied in vitro (Castillejos et al, 2008; Chaves et al, 2008). It is described that thyme EO decreased the molar proportion of acetate and ratio of acetate to propionate, and increase the molar proportion of propionate (Vakili et al, 2013). Monensin increases the molar proportion of propionate and reduces the acetate (Ellis et al, 2012)
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