Apparent fecal digestibility of Blackbelly sheep in the fattening stage fed with Amazonian forages

Abstract

The objective of the work was to evaluate the apparent digestibility of four diets made up of forages from the Ecuadorian Amazon in BlackBelly sheep in the fattening stage. The experimental work was carried out at the Amazon Biodiversity Research, Postgraduate and Conservation Center of the Amazon State University. Four BlackBelly sheep were used in the fattening stage with an initial weight of 34 ± 2 kg and 11 months of age, and were fed with four treatments: T1 (100% forage peanut); T2 (50% forage peanut  + 50% purple king grass); T3 (50% forage peanut + 50% marandu); T4 (50% forage peanut + 50% green king grass). The experiment was carried out under an experimental design of a Latin square of 4 x 4, ANOVA was performed and the comparison of means was made with the Tukey test (P≤0.05). The variables analyzed were: apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP) and crude fiber (CF). The apparent digestibility coefficients of the DM, OM and CP were high and did not show significant differences between treatments. In relation to the use of CF, the T4 treatment showed the highest value. In conclusion, the use of diets consisting of forage peanut, forage peanut + purple king grass, forage peanut + marandu and forage peanut + green king grass in the diet of fattening BlackBelly sheep did not affect the apparent digestibility of DM, OM and CP guaranteeing local forages of optimal nutritional characteristics for this stage.