Vet World   Vol.15   December-2022  Article-4

Multifarious feed additives on lamb performance on Kuwait farms

Background and Aim: A change in the livestock feeding strategy is of utmost importance for the stability of animal health and sustainable livestock productivity to overcome the problem of subsiding the environmental effects of sheep production. Supplementing dietary feed with safe and efficient additives provides optimal animal performance and maximizes productivity. This study aimed to assess the effects of adding various feed additives to lamb rations for optimizing feed efficiency in weaned lambs for meat production in Kuwait.

Materials and Methods: The feed additives, namely, ammonium chloride, urea, algae, fishmeal, and humic acid, were investigated on the physical performance of lambs for their effect on body weight, length, height, and waist length. The total feed consumption rate and feed efficiency were also measured. Each treatment comprising five healthy lambs was randomly allocated into six treatments comprising 30 lambs. The six treatments were the basal ration supplemented with ammonium chloride (50–100 g/day/head), urea (30 g/day/head), fishmeal (35 g/day/head), algae (Spirulina platensis) powder (50 g/day/head), humic acid (2.5 g/day/head), control group with only basal ration. The study was conducted for around 27 months and the data were recorded once in 2 weeks.

Results: The results indicated a positive elevation in the physique of lambs with all tested additives, showing an affirmative insignia for lamb fattening. The growth parameters in terms of augmented length, height, and waist length of lambs' bodies amplified significantly with ammonium chloride and fishmeal supplement, while the other additives reported a non-significant increment. The feed consumption was significantly elevated for ammonium chloride, algae, and fishmeal supplementation, while humic acid was recorded the least. Concerning feed efficiency of young lambs, fish meal and ammonium chloride were reported best, followed by urea. In contrast, algae and humic acid exhibited a non-significant effect on feed efficiency.

Conclusion: This study exposed noteworthy influence on a lamb body's performance with the addition of fish meal and ammonium chloride in lamb rations, trailed by urea and algae. Keywords: ammonium chloride, efficiency, feed additives, fishmeal, performance, urea.

Keywords: ammonium chloride, efficiency, feed additives, fishmeal, performance, urea.

How to cite this article: Burezq H and Khalil F (2022) Multifarious feed additives on lamb performance on Kuwait farms, Veterinary World, 15(12): 2785–2794.

Received: 03-08-2022  Accepted: 19-10-2022     Published online: 05-12-2022

Corresponding author: Hana'a Burezq   E-mail: haborizq@kisr.edu.kw

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2022.2785-2794

Copyright: Burezq H and Khalil, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.