Effects of supplementing rice straw with two fodder tree leaves and their combinations on voluntary feed intake, growth, and nitrogen utilization in sheep.

Fodder tree leaves (FTL) are limitless nutrient resources that provide high-quality feed, particularly during the dry season, improving animal diets, and reducing the use of concentrates in ruminant livestock farming. In order to determine the benefits of FTL, two experiments were conducted to measure the voluntary feed intake, growth performance, and nitrogen utilization of forest-type (FT) sheep fed rice straw (RS) and supplemented with either (LEU) or (SAM) or their equal combination (LS). For the growth trial (Experiment 1), 12 male FT sheep with mean initial body weight (BW) of 17.

The effects of feeding dried browse leaves on rumen ammonia levels, methanogens and protozoa amplification of sheep in the Coastal Savannah of Ghana.

Tanniferous browse leaves are reported to inhibit methanogens and protozoa activity in the rumen, thus contributing to a reduction of methane emission. This study evaluated the influence of feeding dried browse leaves to sheep on rumen ammonia concentration, the base pair at which protozoa and methanogens were amplified and double stranded DNA concentration (dsDNA) from rumen fluid and faeces. The eight treatments were urea treated rice straw, Albizzia lebbek (AL), Moringa oleifera (MO), Millettia thonningii (MT), AL + MO, AL + MT, AL + MO + MT and MO + MT.