Flakemore, Aaron Ross, Otto, John Roger, Suybeng, Bénédicte, Balogun, Razaq Oladimeji, Malau-Aduli, Bunmi Sherifat, Nichols, Peter David, and Malau-Aduli, Aduli Enoch Othniel (2015) Performance and carcass characteristics of Australian purebred and crossbred lambs supplemented with rice bran. Journal of Animal Science and Technology, 57. 36. pp. 1-9.

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Abstract

Background

This study examined the effects of dietary supplementation with rice bran, sire breed and gender on live animal performance and carcass characteristics in Australian crossbred and purebred Merino lambs.

Methods

Forty-eight lambs balanced by sire breed (Dorset, White Suffolk, Merino) and gender (ewe, wether) were randomly allocated into three dietary supplementation groups (Control- 24 lambs fed wheat/barley-based pellets, Low- 12 animals fed a 50/50 ratio of wheat-based/rice bran pellets, and High- 12 lambs fed rice bran pellets). The Rice bran pellets replaced 19% of the barley component of the feed. Animals were group-fed at the rate of 1000 g of the supplement per head per day with ad libitum access to lucerne hay as the basal diet and water. The duration of the feeding trial was 49 days with an initial 21-day adjustment period.

Results

Sire breed differences were evident for initial (p < 0.0002) and final (p < 0.0016) liveweights, hot carcass (p < 0.0030) and cold carcass (p < 0.0031) weights, as well as dressing percentage (p < 0.0078), fat thickness (p < 0.0467), yield grade (p < 0.0470) and rib eye area (p < 0.0022) with purebred Merino under-performing compared to the crossbreds. Concentrate feed conversion efficiency, costs per unit of liveweight gain and over the hooks income were comparable between treatments regardless of the observed trend where the high supplementation group tended to show lower feed intake (745.8 g/day) compared to both the control (939.9 g/day) and low supplementation groups (909.6 g/day). No significant differences (p > 0.05) were observed between treatments for live animal performance, carcass characteristics, gender and their second-order interactions.

Conclusions

Results indicate that Rice bran can be utilised as a cost-effective supplementary feed source in genetically divergent sheep over a 49-day feeding period without detrimental effects on overall live animal performance or carcass characteristics.

Item ID:	39449
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2055-0391
Related URLs:	Publisher
Additional Information:	© 2015 Flakemore et al. Open AccessThis article is 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.
Date Deposited:	06 Oct 2015 23:18
FoR Codes:	07 AGRICULTURAL AND VETERINARY SCIENCES > 0702 Animal Production > 070204 Animal Nutrition @ 100%
SEO Codes:	83 ANIMAL PRODUCTION AND ANIMAL PRIMARY PRODUCTS > 8303 Livestock Raising > 830310 Sheep - Meat @ 100%
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