Indian Journal of Dryland Agricultural Research and Development

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of feeding total mixed ration (TMR) as compared to separate ingredient feeding using sorghum straw, maize stover and red gram chunni in Nellore ram lamb for a period of 91 days. A total of 24 Nellore ram lambs of 3-4 m age were selected and divided into 4 treatment groups having 6 ram lambs in each randomly having similar average body weight (10.47±0.39 kg). Existing feeding practice at farmer’s field as separate offering of greens, dry fodder and concentrate was considered as control group. In another three groups, animals were fed TMR based on maize stover, red gram chunni and sorghum straw, respectively as crop residue for the dry roughage component of TMR for TMR₁, TMR₂ and TMR₃. Fresh feed intakes were significantly (p<0.05) higher in control group (more than 30%) than those of animals in TMR₁,TMR₂ and TMR₃ groups. DM intake, CP/TDN intake was significantly higher in control group. Digestibility of feeds were significantly (p<0.05) superior when used in the form of total mixed ration than fed individually. Body weight gain of animals differ significantly (p<0.05) among the treatment groups. Finally, it may be concluded that chunni based TMR gives better results in terms of growth rate, and economic returns as compared to straw or stover based TMR, however, TMR based feeding was found to be beneficial than the separate feeding practices in Nellore sheep.