Effect of barley variety on feed intake, digestibility, body weight gain and carcass characteristics in fattening lambs

Tilahun, M, Tolemariam, T, Demeke, S, Wamatu, J, Alkhtib, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3381-0304 and Janssens, GPJ, 2021. Effect of barley variety on feed intake, digestibility, body weight gain and carcass characteristics in fattening lambs. Animals, 11: 1773. ISSN 2076-2615

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Abstract

Twenty lambs (18 ± 0.22 kg initial weight) were blocked by weight and individually assigned into pens to evaluate the effects of barley straw variety on digestibility, growth performance and carcass characteristics. The following four treatments were tested: (1) a local barley straw (as control), (2) HB1963 (high grain and straw yields), (3) Traveller (high straw yielder), and (4) IBON174/03 (high grain yielder). A concentrate (50:50 wheat bran and noug seed cake) was offered constantly (300 DM g), whereas the straw was offered ad libitum. The digestibility trial lasted 22 days (15 days to adapt to dietary treatments and 7 days for sampling). The growth performance trial lasted 90 days. At the end, all of the lambs were slaughtered, and their carcasses were evaluated. The IBON174/03 variety had a higher (p < 0.05) intake of organic matter and crude protein, a higher dry matter and organic matter digestibility than the control, and a faster growth than the control. The feed-to-gain ratio was similar among treatments. The slaughter and empty body weights of lambs in the IBON174/03 group were higher than the control variety (p < 0.05). The present study showed that the feeding value of barley straw can differ substantially between varieties and therefore must be considered in the choice of a barley variety.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Animals
Creators:	Tilahun, M., Tolemariam, T., Demeke, S., Wamatu, J., Alkhtib, A. and Janssens, G.P.J.
Publisher:	MDPI
Date:	14 June 2021
Volume:	11
ISSN:	2076-2615
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.3390/ani11061773 DOI 1445610 Other
Rights:	© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	14 Jun 2021 13:00
Last Modified:	14 Jun 2021 13:00
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/43055

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