Effect of dietary supplementation of linseed oil on palatability and nutrient utilization in marwari horses Gupta Palak*, Dhuria R.K., Legha R.A., Pal Y., Dhuria Deepika, Dedar R.K., Talluri T.R. Department of Animal Nutrition, College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Bikaner Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner *Correspondence: guptapalak1632@gmail.com
Online published on 22 March, 2023. Abstract The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation of linseed oil on palatability and nutrient utilization in Marwari horses. The feeding trial was conducted at ICAR-National Research Centre on Equine, Equine Production Centre, Bikaner for 60 days. Eight Marwari horses divided randomly into 2 treatment groups of four horses each were adapted to consume experimental diets consisting of groundnut straw as a sole source of roughage in both the groups and concentrate mixture with no linseed oil (Low Fat Concentrate) and with 8% linseed oil/kg (High Fat Concentrate) in T1 and T2 groups, respectively. Dry matter and organic matter intake were significantly lower (P<0.05) on linseed oil supplementation in terms of kg/d (9.12±0.03 vs 8.95±0.06 for DMI and 8.21±0.03 vs 8.03±0.05 for OMI) whereas, the dry matter and organic matter intake in terms of kg/100kg BW and g/ kgW0.75 demonstrated significantly lower values for horses supplemented with linseed oil only during IV fortnight. The inclusion of linseed oil in the concentrate mixture had no adverse effect on the palatability of diet and it offered a good acceptability by the horses. Linseed oil significantly (P<0.01) increased the apparent digestibility of dry matter (64.1 vs 60.31%), ether extract (79.7 vs 62.4%) and neutral detergent fiber (54.5 vs 48.8%) of the diet. The linseed oil also significantly increased (P<0.01) the TDN (670.8 vs 626.3 g per kg) and ME (2.42 vs 2.26 Mcal) content of diet. It can be concluded that dietary supplementation of linseed oil at the rate of 8% in the concentrate mixture of horses is an easy and safe way to increase energy density of diet and at such inclusion rate no negative effect on digestibility and feed intake was observed. Top Keywords Digestibility, Horses, Linseed oil, Palatability. Top |