Effects of Feeding Faba Bean Hull, Wheat Bran and their Mixtures on Performance of Growing Local Sheep Fed a Basal Diet of Sudan Grass Hay at Gondar Zuria, Ethiopia

Abstract

Conventional sources of feed supplements are costly and mostly unavailable for smallholder farmers. Due to its better nutritional characteristics feeding Sudan grass hay for sheep can contribute in reducing the amount of protein source supplements and can help in improving animal performance. An experiment was conducted using twenty four male local yearling lambs with an initial body weight of 21.77±1.87kg (mean±SD) to investigate feed intake, digestibility, body weight change and economic benefits using local sheep fed a basal diet of Sudan grass hay supplemented with Faba bean hull, Wheat bran and their mixtures. The experiment lasted 90 days of growth and 7 days of digestibility period. The experiment was undertaken using a randomized complete block design having six blocks with four treatments (T1=Sudan grass hay ad libitum+300 g Wheat bran (WB); T2=Sudan grass hay ad libitum+200 g WB+100 g FBH; T3=Sudan grass hay ad libitum+100 g WB+200 g FBH and T4=Sudan grass hay ad libitum+300 g Faba bean hull (FBH)). Three hundred grams of treatment diets were offered daily on dry matter basis. Feed intake and body weight were measured on a daily and ten days interval basis, respectively. All the collected data on dry matter (DM) and nutrient intake, DM and nutrient digestibility, body weight changes and feed conversion efficiency (FCE) were subjected to ANOVA using General Linear Model (GLM) procedure of SAS (2003). Sudan grass hay offered had 11.75% CP, 52.12% NDF and 36.58% ADF on DM basis. Supplement feed at 300g WB (T1), 200g WB+100g FBH (T2), 100g WB+200g FBH (T3) and 300g FBH (T4) had 19.19, 17.73, 16.28 and 14.82% CP, 44.20, 51.03, 57.87 and 64.70% NDF and 12.84, 27.59, 42.35 and 57.10% ADF on DM basis, respectively. Supplementation with high protein content feeds (T1, T2 and T3) improved dry matter, organic matter and crude protein intake and apparent digestibility. Dry matter intake (925.74-947.38g day-1) and crude protein intake (123.46-131.09g day-1) were higher for T1, T2 and T3. The dry matter digestibility (75.26-79.58%) and CP digestibility coefficient (78.46-84.22%) were also higher for T1, T2 and T3. Final body weight (29.88-31.75kg) and average daily gain (98.89-107.22g) were higher for T2 and T3 but with same effect to T1. The partial budge analysis result indicated that sheep fed Sudan grass hay supplemented with 200g WB+100g FBH (T2) had the highest net return (931.62 ETB) and highest MRR (3.32) compared to the other supplemented treatments. Thus, it is recommended that supplementation of Sudan grass hay with 200g WB+100g FBH g head-1 day-1 (T2) is biologically efficient and potentially profitable in the feeding of growing local ram lambs.