Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Department of Animal Science, School of Agriculture, Lorestan University
2 Animal Science Group, Faculty of Agriculture, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran.
3 Animal Science Group, Lorestan University
Abstract
The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of different levels of peanut waste feed (PWF) on growth performance, fermentation parameters, rumen microbial hydrolytic enzyme activity and blood chemical metabolites of fattening lambs. For this purpose, 28 fattening male-lambs with average age of 120±6 days and average live weight of 30±2.5 kg were used with 4 experimental treatments and 7 replications in the form of completely randomized design. The experimental diets contained PWF at levels 0 (control), 4, 8 and 12% based on dry matter (DM), and fed to animals. Including different levels of PWF in the diet had no significant effect on final body weight, total weight gain, average daily gain, feed conversion ration and DM intake compared to the control treatment (P>0.05). By increasing the level of PWF in the diet except for rumen ammonia nitrogen concentration which decreased linearly (P<0.05), other parameters including pH, concentration of volatile fatty acids, carboxymethylcellulase enzyme activity, microcrystalline cellulase and rumen filter paper degrading and blood glucose concentration were not affected by experimental treatments (P>0.05). Rumen protease activity in all internal, external and total parts, total rumen alpha-amylase activity and blood total protein concentration increased linearly with increasing the level of PWF in the diet (P<0.05), while the concentration blood urea nitrogen decreased linearly with increasing PWF level in the diet (P<0.05). In general, the results of the present study showed that the use of peanut waste feed up to 8% of diet DM is recommended in fattening lambs.
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