Deribe Gemiyo Talore, Ayele Abebe
Lengthy fattening of sheep that demands a lot of feed and labour costs is not profitable under smallholder farmer’s management conditions in Areka, Southern Ethiopia. An experiment was conducted to evaluate intake, growth performance and carcass characteristics of yearling lambs (10-12 months). Graded levels of Taro (Colocosia esculenta) were supplemented to replace Wheat Bran (WB) from a concentrate mix CM at the rate of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% on DM basis. Twenty four yearling lambs were allocated to four treatments in completely randomized block design:
• T1=Medium quality Rhodes grass hay, MRG (adlibtum) +25% of the WB from the CM replaced by Taro tuber;
• T2=MRG (adlibtum)+50% of the WB from the CM replaced by Taro tuber;
• T3=MRG (adlibtum)+75% of the WB from the CM replaced by Taro tuber and
• T4=MRG (adlibtum)+100% of the WB from the CM replaced by Taro tuber.
The results indicated that lambs that were receiving dietary T1 and T2 (25% and 50% replacement of WB with taro tuber) produced significantly higher (p<0.05) live weight changes, Average Daily Gain (ADG) and Feed Conversion Efficiency (FCE) compared to those maintained on dietary T4. However, there was no difference (p>0.05) in growth performances of all lambs that were receiving dietary T1, T2 and T3. Similar trend as for growth performance was observed for total fat when the lambs were receiving dietary T1 and T2. The overall mean daily gain was 50.7 g/ head/day in 6-8 weeks, which is reasonably acceptable under smallholder management condition. Taro tuber is rich in energy content (13 MJ/kg DM) but when the amount exceeds certain limits (50% replacement with WB) above the daily concentrate allowance for the lambs, it might limit intake which warrants refinements for its anti-biotic contents as a complementary research.
