Technical note
Comparative performance of Awassi lambs and Black goat
kids on different crude protein levels in Jordan
H.H. Titi
a,*, M.J. Tabbaa
a, M.G. Amasheh
b,1, F. Barakeh
b, B. Daqamseh
baDepartment of Animal Production, University of Jordan, Amman 11942, Jordan
bLivestock Department, National Center for Agriculture Research and Technology Transfer (NCARTT), Amman, Jordan
Accepted 15 November 1999
Abstract
An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different crude protein (CP) levels on the growth performance of Awassi lambs and Black goat kids. Forty lambs and 40 kids were randomly selected and allocated to separate pens of equal size for 75 days. Each group was fed one of four rations containing 12, 14, 16, or 18% CP. Final weights and gains for lambs were higher (P<0.001) than those for kids for all rations fed. No differences were obtained between lambs fed with 16 and 18% CP ration. However, both groups had higher (P<0.001) body weight and gain than lambs in other groups. Kids had higher (P<0.001) body weights and gain when fed with 16% ration. There were no signi®cant differences among kids of other groups. Black goat kids have good potential to support red meat production in Jordan with less ef®ciency than Awassi lambs.#2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Awassi lambs; Black goat; Protein level
1. Introduction
The number of small ruminants in Jordan is increas-ing steadily. Sheep and goat contributes for about 36% of the total animal properties in Jordan with a total of 2.9 millions divided into 2.1 and 0.8 millions for sheep and goat, respectively (MOA, 1997). The national red meat production comes from cattle, sheep, and goat. This production has increased from around 10,000 t in 1984 to around 15,500 t in 1997. That provides only
33% of the local red meat requirements, of which, around 75% is from both sheep and goat (MOA, 1997).
Sheep is the major livestock in Jordan and repre-sents around 50% of the total large animal units. Awassi is the dominant dual-purpose sheep breed in the region and it is well adapted to the prevailing harsh environment of Jordan (Harb, 1994). On the other hand, Black (Baladi) goat is the major goat breed in Jordan. It represents about 85% (688,000) of the total goat population in Jordan and contributes about 20 and 12% of the total red meat and milk production, respectively (MOA, 1997).
Unfortunately, most of the research has been direc-ted towards Awassi, while Black goat received little
*Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hosamtiti@yahoo.com (H.H. Titi)
1Co-corresponding author.
attention. This breed may play a signi®cant role in improving the animal sector in the country. Though, its fattening and growth performance should be ®rst compared with Awassi before any further recommen-dations toward increasing production. Mavrogenis et al. (1984) reported that there is evidence that considerable variation exists among and within ani-mals with regard to live weight and growth rate. Small ruminants fattening contributes a signi®cant portion to red meat production in Jordan. However, farmers tend to use high crude protein (CP) levels in rations fed in order to obtain higher growth rates regardless of its true effect (Harb, 1994). Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare fattening performance of Awassi lambs and Black goat in response to different CP levels in the diet.
2. Materials and methods
This experiment was conducted at The Khanasri Research Station of the National Center for Agricul-tural Research and Technology Transfer. A total of 40 Awassi male lambs and 40 Black goat kids were randomly selected for this experiment. Ages ranged between 110±150 days and body weight averaged 14.763.44 kg for lambs and 13.974.03 kg for kids. Animals were vaccinated against enterotoximia and treated against external parasites before the beginning
of the experiment. Animals of each species were randomly allocated into one of four groups fed 12, 14, 16, or 18% CP (Table 1), for a total of eight groups. Each group was kept in a separate pen for a fattening period of 75 days. Two kids from 12 and 16% CP groups, respectively, were eliminated after 2 weeks due to diarrhoea. Animals were fasted overnight and weighed individually at the beginning of the study then biweekly to the end of the experimental period. Feed was offered ad libitum once a day for all groups at the same time. Orts and refusals were collected and recorded daily. Clean water and mineral blocks were available all the time. Rations for each group were made every 2 weeks and samples of each ration were taken for analysis directly after mixing. Proximate analysis of the four rations is presented in Table 1. Analysis was conducted according to the standard procedures of the AOAC (1984). CP was analyzed according to the Kjeldahl method using the Kjeltic Auto 1030 Analyzer to determine the N content and then multiplying this ratio by 6.25.
Overall daily gain, and feed conversion ratio para-meters were calculated. Data were analyzed using the GLM of the SAS (1988). The model was designed to determine the effect of treatment and breed and their interaction on body weights and gains during the experimental period. Final weights and gain were corrected by initial weights, as a covariate. Least square means were calculated for all variables in
Table 1
Ingredient composition and proximate analysis of the four rations used in the experiment on dry matter basis
Ingredient 12% CP ration 14% CP ration 16% CP ration 18% CP ration
Barley 83.49 75.49 69.4 63.4
SBM 0.0 8.0 14.0 20.0
Wheat Bran 15.0 15.0 15.0 15.0
Lime stone 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Salt 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Vitamins and minerals 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Proximate analysis
Dry matter 91.01 93.08 88.87 91.08
Crude protein 12.54 14.66 18.23 19.76
Crude fiber 8.39 7.77 7.55 6.39
Ether extract 2.12 2.01 2.18 2.54
NFE 63.75 63.16 55.60 57.05
Ash 4.20 5.47 5.30 5.33
the study and the protected LSD test was used to determine signi®cant differences. Furthermore, week effect was introduced to the analysis model in a repeated measure design to determine the growth habit of the two species (Steel and Torrei, 1980).
3. Results and discussion
The analysis of variance for the treatment and species showed that both factors signi®cantly (P<0.001) affected ®nal body weight, total gain and average daily gain. The interaction effect on all mea-surements was also signi®cant (P<0.001). These data indicate that increasing protein level in the ration of Awassi lambs and Black goat kids might affect their growth performance and the treatment effect is related to animal species. The signi®cant effect of the diet± species interaction on lambs and/or kids performance was reported in other studies (Hadjippaniotou and Koumas, 1993).
The 16% CP in the ration was the best (P<0.001) level for all parameters (®nal body weight, total gain and average daily gain) studied for both lambs and kids (Table 2). However, there was no signi®cant difference between 16 and 18% CP levels. Other protein levels gave lower body weight gain. Even though, 14 and 18% of CP were similar, and higher (P<0.05) than 12% CP. The lower effect of the 18% CP level may be due to the energy level in the ration. Such level of CP might require higher energy levels to be correctly metabolized in the animals' body. A good speculation of the improved performance with the 16 and 18% protein levels could be the age of animals
used in the experiment. Usually, animals deposit more protein in their body during early growths, which indicates that they can utilize rations with higher protein levels (Pearson and Dutson, 1991).
Final weights and gain showed that lambs fed the 16% ration had the highest (P<0.05) weights with no differences from those fed the 18% ration (Table 2). No differences were found between lambs fed ration containing 14 and 18% CP. However, as expected, lambs fed the ration containing 12% CP had the lowest ®nal weights. On the other hand, kids fed rations containing 12, 14, and 18% CP had similar ®nal weights and gain, while those fed the 16% CP ration had the highest values.
The authors are not aware of any literature con-cerning Black goat to compare these results. However, these ®ndings were in agreement with those of Kou-mas and Economides (1987), Mavrogenis (1988), Economides (1991), Hadjippaniotou (1992), Hadjip-paniotou (1993), and Al-Nakib et al. (1996) who reported that weaning weight and growth rates of lambs were higher than those of kids. This could be due to the fact that sheep deposit more fat in their bodies than goats (Kellems and Church, 1998). On the other hand, some studies reported higher weaning and post-weaning weights for kids over lambs (Mavro-genis, 1988). Other studies indicated no weight differ-ences between lambs and kids (Hadjippaniotou and Koumas, 1993).
On the other hand, some studies reported different results by concluding that increasing protein level in the diet increased growth rate of kids (Louca and Hancock, 1977), or had no effect on the growth rate of Awassi lambs (Al-Faqih, 1987).
Table 2
Performance of Awassi lambs and Black goat kids after treatment with different protein levelsa
12% CP ration 14% CP ration 16% CP ration 18% CP ration
Lambs Kids Lambs Kids Lambs Kids Lambs Kids
No. 10 9 10 10 10 9 10 10
Initial weightsb 14.95 14.22 14.95 13.80 14.80 14.06 14.335 13.85 Final weightsc 22.75 cd 21.56 d 28.35 b 21.20 d 31.10 a 24.44 c 29.05 ab 22.30 cd
Gainc(kg) 7.9 cd 5.3 d 13.5 b 7.4 d 16.3 a 10.4 c 14.1 ab 8.5 cd
Average daily gaind(g/hd per day) 99.0 cd 94 d 171 b 96 d 208 a 134 c 189 ab 109 cd aMeans with different letters are signi®cantly different (P<0.001).
Growth pattern for lambs and kids are shown in Fig. 1 as analyzed using repeated measure design. Lambs had similar (P>0.1) growth pattern during the ®rst 4 weeks of the experiment. However, lambs fed the 16 and 18% rations continued to be better (P<0.001) than those fed the 12%. On the other hand, kids fed rations containing 12, 14, and 18% CP had similar (P>0.1) growth rates, whereas, those fed the 16% CP ration had higher (P<0.001) growth rate, but with similar pattern. These data emphasize the sig-ni®cance of 16% CP ration for both lambs and kids.
4. Conclusion
Black goat has a good tendency to support the Awassi sheep as breed for meat production in Jordan.
However, results of this study are not enough to give a ®nal judgement on the capacity of this breed. CP level of 16% with 10 MJ in the fattening ration seems to be suf®cient for both sheep and goat. Further studies are required to investigate other protein levels with dif-ferent energy levels.
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