Melese Dejen

Supplementation of Hay: with Concentrate Feed on Performance of Sheep Melese Dejen

A study was conducted to assess the effect of supplementation of hay with graded levels of rapeseed cake (RSC) and rice bran (RB) mixture on feed intake, digestibility, and daily body weight (BW) gain (ADG,) carcass parameters and, to evaluate profitable level of the supplement of Farta sheep fed hay basal diet. 24 yearling male sheep with initial BW of 16.53 ±1.53 kg (Mean ± SD) was used, in a randomized complete block design with four treatments. Treatments were hay fed ad libitum alone (T1) or supplemented with 140 (T2), 280 (T3) and 420 g DM/day concentrate mixture (21.7% RSC + 78.3% RB. Total DM intake was lowest (P > 0.05) for T1 as compared to the supplemented group, and total DM intake was greater for T4 than T2. Digestibility coefficient for DM was greater (P > 0.05) for T3 and T4 as compared to T1 and T2. The results of this study indicated that the practice of supplementation of poor quality diets like hay with agro-industrial by-product concentrates would result to not only improvement in animal performance biologically but also offer a positive and higher net income.