Performance of Djallonké sheep fed untreated rice straw supplemented with urea-molasses block: I. Comparison with urea-ammoniated rice straw
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Date
2010
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ghana Society of Animal Production
Abstract
This study sought to compare the effects of supplementing untreated rice straw with urea molasses blocks (UMB) with feeding urea ammoniated rice straw without supplementation in Djallonké sheep. Two trials were undertaken; a growth trial and a digestibility trial. The growth trial involved twelve growing D’jallonké wethers which were randomly assigned to three diets; untreated rice straw (URS), urea ammoniated rice straw (ARS) or untreated rice straw supplemented with urea molasses block (SMB). A digestibility trial was carried out involving six mature wethers which were kept in metabolism cages and were assigned to the test diets in a 3 x 3 Latin square design with two replicates each. Ammoniation resulted in a 2.2 fold increase in crude protein of rice straw and decreased neutral detergent fibre (NDF) and hemicellulose content of the straw by 10.9% and 48.5% respectively. Voluntary dry matter intake was higher (P<0.05) for ARS than for URS but similar (P>0.05) to SMB. Similar trends were observed for dry matter digestibility and average daily gain. It was concluded that both ammoniation of rice straw and supplementation of untreated rice straw with UMB significantly improved the nutritive value of the untreated rice straw. These two treatments, however, did not differ from each other in terms of average daily gain and digestibility.
Description
Keywords
Rice straw, molasses block, Djallonké sheep, urea, ammoniation
Citation
Ghanaian Journal of Animal Science, 5(2): 1-8