EFFECT OF SUBSTITUTING LOW QUALITY ZAHDI DATE IN RATIONS INSTEAD OF BARLEY ON AWASSI SHEEP PERFORMANCE

A. Ahmed, A.; J. Hassan, M.; A. Al-Jadoui, F.

	EFFECT OF SUBSTITUTING LOW QUALITY ZAHDI DATE IN RATIONS INSTEAD OF BARLEY ON AWASSI SHEEP PERFORMANCE
The Iraqi Journal of Agricultural Science
Article 1, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2014, Pages 359-367
Authors
A. A. Ahmed; M. J. Hassan; F. A. Al-Jadoui
Abstract
This study was undertaken to investigate the effect of bad quality Zahdi dates substitution instead of barley on performance of Turkish Awassi ewe lambs. Twenty five ewes lambs aged 4-5 months and 28.24±0.25kg average body weight, individually feeding were divided into five equal groups. The total period of the experiment 60 days befor this period ewes lambs were fed ten days as adaptation period to study the substitution bad quality Zahdi dates instead of part of barley 10 %, 20% whole dates and 10%, 20% crushed whole dates for the treatments T2, T3, T4 and T5 respectively while T1 was regard as control diet (0% date). The ewe lambs were fed concentrate diet once daily at rate of 3% of live body weight (LBW) in addition to ad-libitum alfalfa hay. Ewe lambs were weekly weighted and the daily quantities allowances of concentrate diets gave for each ewe adjusted according to the body weight change. The results of this study revealed not significantly differences in digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter and crude protein for the date treatments, while there was significant differences (p<0.01) for digestibility of organic matter (OM) and crude protein for date physical shape treatments, and significant differences (p<0.05) for the interaction between date% and the physical shape for the digestibility of crude protein (CP) in treatments T4 and T5 than the other treatments. For the effect of date% and the physical shape there was not significant differences for the final body weight, daily weight gain and feed conversion efficiency, while there was significant increasing (p <0.05) in total weight gain The total feed intake (g/day) has appeared highly significant differences (p<0.01) for the treatment T5 than other treatments. In conclusion the crushed whole dates was the best than whole dates in the case of substitution instead of barley to increase of whole daily gain and feed conversion efficiency.
Keywords
whole dates; crushed whole dates; libitum

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