The effects of physical form of alfalfa and proccecing of barley on performance and digestibility of nutrient in Dalagh breed fattening lambs

The trend of changes in the situation of agriculture and animal husbandry in Iran during the last half century has been such that the livestock population has increased significantly and As a result, the nutritional needs of livestock have also increased. In Iran, sheep breeding is a major part of livestock activities. Irregular grazing has caused incessant erosion of pastures and Rising demand for meat has led producers to move from a grazing system to a dense production system, or in other words, a sheep fattening systemt providing food in a fattening period accounts for about 65 to 70 percent of the cost of raising and maintaining livestockt Therefore, physical and chemical processes can increase the nutritional value of feed and improve production efficiency.

In order to investigate the effect of physical form of alfalfa fodder and barley grain processing on yield and nutrient digestibility in fattening lambs of 30 Dalagh breed, 3.5±1/2month-old male lambs with an average weight of 17 ± 1.1 were used. These experiments were statistically analyzed in a factorial experiment based on a completely randomized design with two factors. The experimental variables include: physical form of forage and barley grain processing. In the 98-day period (14 days of habituation and 84 days of the main period) with 6 treatments and 5 replications, the experimental diets were equal in terms of protein and energy content. Consumed feed and the rest of feed were weighed daily and the animals were weighed on an empty stomach every two weeks, after 16 hours of hunger using a digital scale And all statistical analyzes of this design were performed in SAS software version 1/9.

There was a significant difference between different treatments in terms of weight gain. The treatments that used pellet alfalfa in comparison with chopped alfalfa had a higher final weight of 42.81 compared to 41.50 and also had a higher daily weight gain in the whole period of 297.49 compared to 282.94. The dry matter consumption of the whole period in the treatments receiving pellet alfalfa was 1933.49 gr and higher than the treatments receiving chopped alfalfa 1883/76 gr and also the use of pellet alfalfa improved the feed conversion ratio in the third month. Feed digestibility was higher in pellet alfalfa treatments and digestibility of dry matter, netrul detergent fiber and crude protein were statistically significantly different in different treatments. Barley grain processing had a significant effect on end-to-end weight gain and end-of-period weight was reported to be significantly higher than ground barley and whole barley grain in treatments receiving flake barley, respectively. Also, the daily weight gain in the whole period in the treatments receiving barley flakes and ground and whole barley grains were 294.05, 289.40 and 287.20, respectively. Treatments receiving flake barley, ground barley and whole barley grain had higher digestibility of crude protein from 63.96, 62.98 and 61.95, respectively, from right to left.

Forage processing of alfalfa and barley grains means that in the whole processing of feed of fattening lambs, it increases the feed consumption and increases the daily weight and in total a higher final weight in fattening lambs, Also, animal feed processing improves feed efficiency and increases digestibility.