Uso da vagem de faveira triturada em substituição ao milho moído na dieta de ovinos confinados

Abstract

Using conventional concentrate feeds to overcome nutritional deficits can often be economically unfeasible in production systems, so an interesting alternative is to use available native forages with good nutritional value, such fava bean pods. In this context, the objective was to evaluate the inclusion of increasing levels of ground fava bean pods in place of ground corn in feedlot sheep diets. Twenty-eight sheep without racial pattern, with average initial live weight of 18.34 ± 4.81 kg, average age of 120 days, were distributed in an experimental design in randomized blocks (DBC), with seven replications. The diets consisted of Tifton-85 grass hay and concentrates (ground corn grain, soybean meal, wheat bran, crushed fava beans and mineral supplement), with treatments represented by the inclusion levels of crushed fava beans (0, 33, 66 and 100%) based on dry matter (DM). Treatment means were estimated using LSMEANS and were analyzed using regression analysis in the general linear models procedure (PROC GLM). The supply of increasing levels of crushed faveira pod in the sheep diet linearly decreased the consumption of ether extract (P=0.004) and metabolizable energy (P=0.002).There was a decreasing linear effect on the apparent digestibility coefficients of dry matter (P=0.0354), organic matter (P=0.0384), crude protein (P=0.0016), ether extract (P=0.0361), neutral detergent fiber (P=0.0148) and total digestible nutrients (P=0.0039). Regarding the digestibility of non fiber carbohydrates, there was an increasing linear effect (P=0.0003). No effect was observed for average daily weight gain (P=0.878), time spent feeding (P=0.439), rumination (P=0.457) and idleness (P=0.879), rumination efficiencies in relation to DM (P =0.471) and NDF (P=0.443) and feeding efficiency in relation to DM (P=0.977) and NDF (P=0.962). For the variables of meric chewing, a quadratic effect was observed for the time of meric chewing per ruminated bolus (P=0.0218), daily number of meric chews (P=0.0240), number of meric chews per bolus (P=0 .0232) and number of meric chews per minute (P=0.0246). According to the results above, it is recommended to replace ground corn with ground fava beans in feedlot sheep diets up to 100%.