Gebretsadik et al., 2011. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 23, Article #184

The research was conducted in Maichew Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training College, located at 120 km distance south from Mekele, Ethiopia. The objectives of the study were to assess the impact of concentrate mixture on feed intake, digestibility and to evaluate the different treatment levels on carcass parameters of growing lambs fed on urea treated wheat (Triticuln astivum) straw as basal diet. Twenty male yearling growing lambs with an average live weight of 17 ± 1.6 kg were used. The treatment diets, namely, S0, S150, S200, and S250 g DM/head/day concentrate mixture were assigned randomly with a basal diet, urea treated wheat straw (UTWS). The experimental design was a randomized complete design with four treatments and five replications. For the analysis of carcass parameters slaughter weight was added as a covariate in the model. The results showed that intake of UTWS was significantly depressed (p<0.05), whereas total DM intake, CP intake and digestibility of CP, DM and OM was significantly higher (p<0.05) for growing lambs supplemented with the highest level of concentrate mixture than the control treatment. The average values of hot carcass weight and dressing percentage on slaughter weight base were significantly (p<0.05) higher for S250 and S200 as compared to S0 and S150. In this experiment supplementation had seen to improve feed intake, digestibility, as well as the composition of carcass parameters.