NUTRITIONAL BLOCKS EMPLOYED AS SUPPLEMENT FOR SHEEP IN DRY TROPICAL HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL MEXICO

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to assess the productive performance of both confined and grazing sheep, supplemented with nutritional blocks (NB). Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 was carried out with confined sheep while. Experiment 2 was carried out with sheep grazing continuously on native grassland. For both experiments 1 and 2, fifteen sheep F1 (Dorper x Pelibuey) were used with an initial average body weight of 17 ± 3 and 26 ± 3 kg, respectively. Treatments in experiment 1 were: T1= basal diet + NB1 with L. leucocephala; T2= basal diet + NB2 with wheat bran; and T3= Basal diet (control). Treatments in experiment 2 were T1= grazing +NB1 (containing L. leucocephala); T2= grazing + NB2 (containing wheat bran) and T3= grazing (control). Response variables in both experiments were: average daily gain (ADG), nutritional block intake (NBI), basal diet intake (BDI), total intake (TI), dry matter apparent digestibility of the nutritional block (ADDMNB), dry matter apparent digestibility of the basal diet (ADDMBD). In both experiments results were analyzed using a completely randomized design. In experiment 1, significant differences (P<0.05) were observed in ADG, T1 and T2 showed the highest daily weight gains with 92 and 102 g day-1 respectively. T3 showed the lowest daily weight gains with 64 g day-1. Significant differences (P<0.05) were observed for NBI, showing that NB1 had higher intake (135 g animal-1 day-1) than NB2. In experiment 2, T1 showed high NBI (133 g day-1), T2 showed high ADG (68 g day-1) and NB2 had higher ADDMNB (832 g kg-1 DM) than NB1. It was concluded that supplementing with nutritional blocks in both confinement and grazing sheep improved their productive performance. The highest productive response was observed when grazing sheep were supplementing with NB2.