1Agricultural Transformation Agency, P.O. Box 708, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2School of Animal and Range Sciences, Haramaya University, P.O. Box 138, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
3Food Security Centre, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Department of Animal Production and Technology, Aksum University, P.O. Box 314, Shire, Ethiopia
*Corresponding author: E-mail: hassenwukro@yahoo.com
Online published on 17 March, 2017.
This study evaluated the effect of substituting dried mulberry (Morus alba) leaves for concentrate mixture (CM; wheat bran and noug/niger (Guizotia abyssinica) seed cake mixture in 2: 1 proportion) on performance and carcass characteristics of sheep fed a basal diet of natural pasture hay. Thirty local yearling male sheep with an initial body weight (BW) of 18.2±1.61 kg were assigned to treatments in a completely randomized block design. Treatments were iso-nitrogenous supplements of 100% CM offered at 250 g DM/sheep/d (T1), 67% CM and 33% dried mulberry leaves (ML: T2), 33% CM and 67% ML (T3), 100% ML (T4) and 100% dried Leucaena leucocephala (LL) leaves (T5). The feeding and digestibility trials lasted for 90 and 7 days, respectively. Carcass of each experimental animal was evaluated at the end of the digestibility trial. The highest (P<0.05) DM intake was observed in treatment T4 (868.8±60.7) while the lowest intake was found in T1 (756.4±84.2) and T5 (763.5±115.6). The digestibility of nutrients (DM, OM, CP, NDF and ADF), average daily gain and carcass characteristics were similar in different treatments. Therefore, mulberry leaves could serve as a complete alternative replacement for wheat bran and niger-seed cake based conventional concentrate mixtures in lambs under Ethiopian smallholder farming conditions.
Body weight, Carcass, Concentrate mixture, Digestibility, Feed intake, Lambs, Mulberry leaves
