Studies On The Feeding Effects Of Soybean Straw And Feeding Sweet Sorghum In Sheep

This paper aims to open up new resources of roughage to provide the technical guidance and basis for scientific rearing of livestock. Two kinds of roughage forages (soybean straw and feeding sweet sorghum) were used to study their feeding effects for sheep raising. Influences of feeds with different proportions of the two kinds of forages in hay on body weight gain, apparent digestibility and nitrogen balance of the mixed feeds were evaluated respectively.Two experiments were conducted to study feeding effects of soybean straw which studied in Exp.1 and that of feeding sweet sorghum which evaluated in Exp.2.The Exp.1 was conducted to study the effects of soybean straw on body weight gain, apparent digestibility and nitrogen balance in sheep. Fifty one Dorset ewes in a completely randomized design were randomly divided into 3 groups and 17 sheep each. In each group, sheep were fed with the equal concentrate, while the roughage were 100% soybean straw (Group I), 50% soybean straw + 50% hay (Groupâ…¡) and 100% hay (control group), respectively.The objective of Exp.2 was to evaluate the effects of feeding sweet sorghum on body weight gain, apparent digestibility and nitrogen balance in sheep. Fifty one Dorset ewes in a completely randomized design were randomly alloted to 3 groups with 17 sheep per group. In each group, sheep were fed with the equal concentrate, while the roughages were 100% feeding sweet sorghum (A), 50% feeding sweet sorghum + 50% hay (B) and 100% hay (control), respectively.The results of the two experiments were as follows.Exp.1. The results indicated that average daily gain (ADG) of groupâ…¡was significantly higher than that of the control group (P<0.05). The ether extract (EE) digestibility of groupâ… andâ…¡was significantly higher than that of the control group (P<0.05). Compared with neutral detergent fiber (NDF) digestibility of the control group, groupâ…¡had no significant difference(P>0.05), the NDF digestibility of groupâ… was significant lower than that of groupâ… and control group (P<0.05). The difference of groupâ… ,â…¡and the control group with the digestibility of crude protein (CP), acid detergent fiber (ADF), energy and nitrogen balance were not significant (P>0.05). It was concluded that soybean straw could be used as one source of roughage, and mixing with hay would get better feeding effects.Exp.2. The results indicated that there were no significant difference between the experimental groups and the control group with ADG, apparent digestibility of energy, CP and NDF, as well as nitrogen balance (P>0.05). The EE apparent digestibility of experimental group A was significantly higher than that of the control group (P<0.05).Compared with the control group, experimental groups were significantly lower with the apparent digestibility of ADF (P<0.05). It was concluded that feeding sweet sorghum could be used into sheep production as one source of roughages, but the feeding amount should be limited in practice.