Abstract

An experiment was conducted using twenty five growing Salale sheep lambs with an initial body weight of 23.63 ± 1.12 kg (mean ± SD). The objective was to investigate the effect of supplementing different proportions of wheat bran and Noug seed (Guizotia abyssinica) cake on feed intake, digestibility, and body weight gain of Salale Sheep type lambs fed natural pasture hay basal diet. The sheep were treated against internal and external parasites and bacterial disease before commencing the study. A randomized complete block design (RCBD) was used. The experimental lambs were categorized into five blocks of five lambs based on their initial body weight and the five feed treatments were randomly assigned to each animal in a block., the treatments were: natural pasture hay alone (T1) (control), 350gWB (T2), 117gNSC+233gWB (T3), 233gNSC+117gWB (T4) and 350gNSC (T5) with all groups offered adlibtum feeding of natural pasture hay.. The supplements were offered at the rate of 350 g/day, which were offered at 8:00 and 4:00 hours in two equal portions daily. There was a significant difference (P < 0.001) in DM intake of hay among treatments with the highest value (722.37g/day/animal) recorded for T1 and the least values (543.73 g/sheep/day) and (560.69 g/sheep/day) were recorded for T2 and T5, respectively. Total daily DM and OM intake was significantly higher (P<0.001) for supplemented treatments than for T1. The total CP intake was in the order of T5>T4 > T3 > T2 > T1 (P < 0.001). The apparent DM, OM and CP digestibility was significantly higher (p<0.001) in supplemented sheep than the non-supplemented group. Average daily gain (ADG) and feed conversion efficiency (FCE) of non-supplemented sheep was lower (P < 0.05) than the supplemented ones. Sheep supplemented with T2 (350g WB/day/head) had the highest net return (604.4 ETB) and is potentially profitable in feeding of growing Salale sheep as compared to the other supplemented treatments.