Journal of Krishi Vigyan

This experiment was aimed to assess the impact of substituting soybean meal in the concentrate mixture by incorporating rice distillers dried grains with solubles (RDDGS) on the growth and carcass characteristics of Vizianagaram ram lambs. In a completely randomized design 24 ram lambs (3-4 m old, 9-11 kg body weight) were randomly divided into four dietary treatments. All animals received a diet of super napier and concentrate mixture. The soybean meal in the concentrate mixture was replaced with RDDGS at 0% (T1), 50% (T2), 75% (T3), and 100% (T4) levels. The feeding trial lasted for 90 days. The findings of the study suggest that partial or complete replacement of soybean meal with RDDGS did not have any negative impact on body weight gain, average daily gain, and feed conversion ratio in ram lambs. The carcass studies revealed different traits viz., empty body weight, carcass weight and dressing percentage were statistically similar among all treatment groups. The proportion of wholesale cuts (% carcass weight) viz., foreshank & brisket, shoulder & neck, rack, loin and leg were numerically higher in T₄ compared to other treatments, but the differences between treatments were statistically non-significant. The yield of visceral organs expressed as percentage of pre slaughter weight and longissimus dorsi muscle chemical composition were also unaffected with dietary any of the treatments. It was concluded that, RDDGS is a nutritionally similar to soybean meal for replacing in the concentrate mixtures fed to growing ram lambs.