Abstract:
The effect of urea and molasses treatment of sugar cane tops, sorghum straw and ground nut hulls for 3 weeks or 4 weeks incubation of period was studied concerning the nutritive value and chemical composition.
Eighteen uncast desert rams ranging in age between 1–1.5 years, with live weight 23–28 kg were used as experimental animal, which were randomly allotted for six diets treatment groups in 3 × 2 factorial arrangement of 3 diets (sugar cane tops , sorghum straw and groundnut hulls) treated with urea and molasses for two incubation period (3weeks and 4weeks) groups of animals were divided invitro 3 replicates with 3 animal each. The experiment lasted for 21 days 14 days adaptation period followed by 7 days recording period. The effect of type feed incubation period and interaction of period on the feed intake and digestibility test data were recorded.
The results of statistical data analysis showed that there was a significant effects (p<0.001) of the period of incubation and interaction between incubation period and type of feed on dry matter intake (gm/ day). Higher dry matter intake was recorded for sheep fed on treated sugar cane tops incubated for (week 3). (688/gm/day), and the lower was reported for the sheep fed sugar cane tops incubated for (four weeks) (427.43/gm/days).The type of feed had no significant effect (p>0.05) on dry matter intake.
The dry matter intake / metabolic body weight ratio did not affected significantly (p>0.05) by the type feed where as the incubation period and the interaction between incubation period and type feed was a significant (P<0.01). The incubation period in weeks result had a significant (P<0.05) effect on dry matter intake as percentage of live weight and also the interaction between incubation period × type feed of roughage was Significant (P<0.01). The dry matter intakes as percentage of live weight (kg) were 2.73 and 1.79 for sugar cane tops incubated for week 3 and week 4 respectively, while the sorghum straw recoded 2.30 and 2.41 for 3weeks and 4 weeks respectively.
The effect of incubation period in week on dry matter digestibility percentage, organic matter percentage and crude fiber digestibility percentage was highly significant (P<0.001) .The interaction of incubation period in week × type feed on dry matter digestibility percentage and organic matter percentage was highly significant (P<0.001).
The crude protein digestibility reach the statistical significance (P<0.05) for the effect of type feed and the interaction of incubation period in week × type feed was highly significant (P<0.001).
The type of feed had a significant effect (P<0.01) on nitrogen free extract percentage. Concerning digestibility characteristic the result showed higher digestibility incubation period in 3weeks for the sugar cane tops, and while the digestibility of sorghum straw incubation period in 3 weeks is lower than that of incubation period in 4weeks.
