Evaluation of sorghum hull serving as feed alternative on growth performance, nutrients digestibility and plasma metabolites for growing goats

摘要

Sorghum is quite rich in our region, however, its by-product, sorghum hull (SH), has not been reported as feed alternatives till now. This study is aimed to evaluate the potential of SH as feed alternatives for growing goats by measuring growth performance, nutrients digestibility and plasma metabolites. Forty goats were allocated to 4 blocks of 10 goats each. Animals were fed 1 of 4 diets displaced by varying SH levels for wheat bran. The displaced levels were 0 (control), 5% (treatment 1), 10% (treatment 2) and 15% (treatment 3), respectively. Feeding of SH had no effect on dry matter intake for 4 treatments (P > 0.05). Treatment 2 resulted in higher average net gain (P < 0.05) compared with control. Average daily gain and feed conversion ratio were increased (P < 0.05) for treatment 1 and treatment 2 relative to control. The crude protein digestibility in 3 treatments was higher than control (P < 0.05). Goats fed treatment 1 and treatment 2 had lower plasma urea nitrogen (P < 0.05) and malondialdehyde levels over control (P < 0.05). Plasma concentrations of glucose, alanine aminotransferase, uric acid, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein, triglyceride, creatinine, superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, total protein and albumin were unaffected by SH treatments (P > 0.05). These results indicated that SH was beneficial to growth performance, nutrients digestibility and plasma metabolites, thus, could be used as a feed alternative for growing goats.