Abstract:
Globally meat production and consumption has increased rapidly in recent decades, which in turn increases the need to develop techniques and products for improving animal production. Probiotic is one of these impoved products. This study was performed at AL-Khalidiah farm, Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. It was designed to investigate the effect of two different probiotic (PROTEXIN®) formulation in relation to different dosing methods on newborn Najdi breed lamb’s rumen fermentation and histomorphology. Fourty newborn lambs were divided into four equal groups; First group was a control group (group C) without any probiotic supplementation, second group (group T1) supplemented with a single dose of 5 ml PROTEXIN® LIFE START at the first day of age, third group (group T2) supplemented with daily dose of 0.25 gm PROTEXIN® COMPOUNDER and the forth group (group T3) supplemented with a single dose of 5 ml PROTEXIN® LIFE START at the first day of age then continued with a daily dose of 0.25 gm PROTEXIN® COMPOUNDER till the end of the study. The study continued up to 60 days of age. Rumen fluid (collected by a stomach pump) and rumen tissues (at postmortem) were collected for measuring fermentation and histomorphology effects of the treatment respectively.The results were analyzed using (ANOVA). Rumen fluid showed increased pH with no effect on lactic acid concentration. Rumen TVFA, propionic acid and valeric acid increased with the treatment, but no significant variations between the groups. Molar proportion between VFA increased in propionic acid and valeric acid in contrast to a decrease in acetic acid compared to control group. No morphological or histological effects regarding rumen papillary length, width and surface area except increased of papillary density per cm² and thickness of papillary stratum corneum layer. PROTEXIN® probiotic improved lambs’ rumen fermentation and histomorphology of rumen papillae with no significant differences between application methods.
