Abstract
This study was conducted to evaluate body weight gain, feed intake and digestibility of highland sheep supplemented with wheat bran and dried Acacia saligna leaf five treatments, namely grass hay as a control (T1), 100 g per day A. saligna, (T2), 200 g per day A. saligna (T3), 300 g per day A. saligna (T4) and 400 g per day A. saligna (T5) with a fixed amount (200 g per day) of wheat bran was provided to the supplemented groups. Ram lambs in the control group gained 7.8 g/day while ram lambs placed under T2, T3, T4 and T5 gained 42.8, 63.9, 62.2 and 57.8 g/day. Thus, supplementation of 200 g/day dried A. saligna and 200 g/day wheat bran is biologically more efficient and economically more profitable and thus recommended for highland ram lambs fattening. Key words: Acacia saligna, digestibility, grass hay, highland sheep, Mekelle Agricultural Research Centre, wheat bran.
Highlights
This study was conducted to evaluate body weight gain, feed intake and digestibility of highland sheep supplemented with wheat bran and dried Acacia saligna leaf five treatments, namely grass hay as a control (T1), 100 g per day A. saligna, (T2), 200 g per day A. saligna (T3), 300 g per day A. saligna (T4) and 400 g per day A. saligna (T5) with a fixed amount (200 g per day) of wheat bran was provided to the supplemented groups
Wheat bran contained the highest CP content followed by A. saligna and grass hay
The NDF content of A. saligna was lower than wheat bran and grass hay
Summary
A. saligna is one of the introduced browse shrub or tree species, which is widely grown and evergreen in different agro-ecological zones of Tigray (Shumuye and Yayneshet, 2011). A. saligna has reasonably large amount of crude protein (Moujahed et al, 2000), which has the potential to supplement the predominantly poor quality fibrous feeds widely used by smallholder farmers. As with other acacia species, the major limiting factor in the use of A. saligna is the presence of high concentration of tannins (Moujahed et al, 2005; Shumeye and Yayneshet, 2011). The low protein digestibility of A. cyanophylla in sheep was due to the high level of condensed tannins (CT) in its foliage (Degen et al, 1995). The use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to deactivate tannin has been recommended (Ben Salem et al, 1997; Moujahed et al, 2000; Ben Salem et al, 2005b; Olivares et al, 2013; Rojas et al, 2015a; Rojas et al, 2015b), its wider use under smallholder
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