SERUM BIOCHEMICAL INDICES AND RUMEN METABOLITES OF GROWING YANKASA RAMS SUPPLEMENTED WITH MILLET STOVER BASED SUPPLEMENTS WITH FEED ADDITIVES DURING EARLY RAINING SEASON GRAZING

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to investigate the response of growing Yankasa rams to urea-treated or untreated millet Stover based supplements during early raining season grazing on haematological parameters and rumen metabolites. A total of 20Yankasa rams were used for the experiments in a completely randomized design with five treatments of four animals each in replicate. Five different supplements were formulated to contained 12% CP from urea-treated or urea untreated millet Stover and other ingredients with feed additive. Supplement 1 had urea untreated millet stover, while 2, 3, 4 and 5 contained urea-treated millet stover at 1, 2, 3, and 4% respectively with feed additive in experiment 4. Animals were offered their respective supplement at 400g per head per day (200g each in the morning and evening) and thereafter allowed to graze the available forages. The experiments lasted for 84 days. Result of the experiment revealed RBC and MCH differs significantly (P<0.05) across the diets. Rumen NH3-N was significantly (P<0.05) higher 51.34 and 61.18 mg/dl before and after feeding in animals fed supplement 1 than 42.06 and 52.66 mg/dl in that fed supplement 4 respectively. It is therefore concluded that all supplements had not detrimental effect on blood and rumen parameters. It is recommended that supplement with urea-untreated millet stover can be fed to Yankasa rams during raining season.