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The Effect of Feeding Dried Tomato Pomace and Concentrate on Nutritional and Growth Parameters of Hararghe Highland Sheep, Eastern Ethiopia

Kefyalew Gebeyew, Getachew Animut, Mengistu Urge and Teka Feyera

Most tropical feed resources particularly crop residues and hay are mostly deficient in protein content. Thus, maximization of livestock productivity in the tropical regions largely depends on the efficiency of utilization of locally available protein sources. This study was aimed to evaluate the effect of supplementation of dried tomato pomace, concentrate mix and their mixture on intake, apparent digestibility, and live weight of Hararghe highland sheep fed a basal diet of natural pasture hay. The study was conducted using 24 yearling intact Hararghe highland male sheep with mean initial body weight (BW) of 16.7±2 (Mean ± SD). The experiment consisted 90 days feeding and 7 days digestibility trials. The experimental sheep were blocked into 6 blocks of 4 animals based on their initial BW and randomly assigned to one of the four treatments within a block. Treatments were ad libitum feeding of hay alone (T1), hay supplemented with 359.61 g dried tomato pomace (DTP; T2), hay supplemented with 300 g concentrate mix (CM=33% Noug seed cake (NSC) +67% Wheat Bran (WB); T3), and hay with 1:1 ratio of DTP and CM (T4). The crude protein (CP) content of hay, DTP, NSC and WB used in this study were 9.1, 17.8, 29.6 and 17.2%, respectively. Apparent digestibility of dry matter (DM) was 63, 61, 70 and 67% and that of CP was 66, 74, 81 and 77% for T1, T2, T3 and T4, respectively. Digestibility of DM was higher for T3 as compared to T1 and T2, while values for T4 were similar with T1 and T3. Digestibility of CP was highest for T3, lowest for T1 and intermediate for the other two treatments. Average daily gain (ADG) was lowest for T1 (30 g/day), and among the supplemented treatments values for T4 (65 g/day) was numerically higher than that for T3 (58 g/day) and T2 (57 g/day). Feed conversion efficiency also showed more or less a similar trend to ADG. Taken as a whole, the present finding evidenced that dried tomato pomace can replace concentrate mixture 100% as a supplement to sheep fed a basal diet of natural pasture hay.