Effects of supplementing herbaceous forage legume pellets on growth indices and blood profile of West African dwarf sheep fed Guinea grass
Twenty West African dwarf (WAD) rams with average body weight of 12.43 ± 0.5 kg were used for the experiment that lasted 84 days to investigate the effects of supplementing herbaceous forage legume pellets on weight change and blood profile of animals fed Panicum maximum basal diet. Sole Panicum max...
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Published in | Tropical animal health and production Vol. 51; no. 4; pp. 867 - 877 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Dordrecht
Springer Netherlands
01.05.2019
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Twenty West African dwarf (WAD) rams with average body weight of 12.43 ± 0.5 kg were used for the experiment that lasted 84 days to investigate the effects of supplementing herbaceous forage legume pellets on weight change and blood profile of animals fed
Panicum maximum
basal diet. Sole
Panicum maximum
served as the control diet and three other experimental diets were
P. maximum
supplemented with
Lablab purpureus
pellets,
P. maximum
supplemented with
Calopogonium mucunoides
pellets and
P. maximum
supplemented with
Mucuna pruriens
pellets constituted the four treatments which were arranged in a completely randomised design. The rams were divided into four groups of five animals each and were balanced for variation in live weight before they were assigned the experimental diets.
Panicum maximum
was offered to the animals ad libitum and legume pellets were supplemented. Significant differences (
P <
0.05) were observed in weight gain of the rams. Those fed the control diet had the lowest value of 41.88 g/day while rams supplemented
L. purpureus
pellets had the highest value (83.66 g/day). Haematological parameters, leucocyte values and serum biochemical indices of WAD rams were significantly (
P <
0.05) different across the dietary treatments at the final stage of the trial. The values for red blood cells, haemoglobin concentration, packed cell volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin decreased slightly in rams supplemented with
M. pruriens
pellets. Reduction of serum biochemical parameters was also noticed in rams supplemented with
M. pruriens
pellets. It can be concluded that
L. purpureus
pellets ranked the best among the herbaceous legume pellets as supplemental feed for West African dwarf sheep resulting in higher weight gain and better feed conversion efficiency with no deleterious effect on blood profile. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Undefined-3 |
ISSN: | 0049-4747 1573-7438 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s11250-018-1767-4 |