Nutrient digestibility, nitrogen balance and plane of nutrition in native sheep fed feed blocks containing sorghum stover of different particle size Vidya B.*, Venkateshwarlu M., Nagalakshmi D., Chandra A. Sarat, Preetham V. Chinni, Kumari N. Nalini Department of Animal Nutrition, College of Veterinary Science, Rajendranagar, P.V. Narsimha Rao Telangana Veterinary University, Hyderabad-500 030, India *Corresponding author: anumoluvidya@gmail.com
Online Published on 23 January, 2023. Abstract Vidya, B., Venkateshwarlu, M., Nagalakshmi, D., Chandra, A.S., Preetham, V.C. and Kumari, N.N. 2023. Nutrient digestibility, nitrogen balance and plane of nutrition in native sheep fed feed blocks containing sorghum stover of different particle size. Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology, 23: 175–183. The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of particle size (PS) of sorghum stover (SS) on nutrient utilization in native sheep. Twenty one, adult Deccani rams (19.45+0.80 kg) of 2–3 yrs age were randomly divided into 3 groups of 7 animals each and fed complete feed blocks containing 8 mm (SSCFB-8), 12 mm (SSCFB-12) and 16 mm (SSCFB-16) particle sizes of the stover. Decreasing of PS of stover significantly increased the digestibility of dry matter (DM), crude fibre (CF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent fibre (ADF) but did not show any effect on digestibility of organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), ether extract, nitrogen free extract (NFE) and cellulose and nitrogen balance. The SSCFB-16 diet had significantly (P<0.05) lower total digestible nutrients (TDN) and metabolizable energy (ME) content compared to SSCFB-8 but comparable with SSCFB-12 diet. There was no significant (P>0.05) difference in digestible crude protein (%) content among three diets. PS of SS had no effect (P>0.05) on intake (g/d) of DM, CP, TDN and ME (Mcal/d). Based on the results of the present study the SS ground to 8 mm could be considered as optimum for better nutrient utilization in sheep. Top Keywords Nutrient digestibility, Particle size, Sheep, Sorghum stover. Top |