The effect of nutritional and fermentational characteristics of grass and legume silages on feed intake, growth performance and blood indices of lambs

Silages containing bioactive forage legumes: a promising protein‐rich feed source for growing lambs

“…In contrast, Przemyslaw et al . () recorded a lower intake of RC silage (44·1 g DM kg −1 metabolic weight), but this may have been due to the fact that the lambs in their study received twice the amount barley as was fed to lambs in our study, and the lambs also differed in age. Our results thus confirm those of Speijers et al .…”

“…The pure legume mixture RC‐SF had the highest CP and lowest NDF contents, in addition to the highest lactic acid and lowest soluble N concentrations, which is consistent with it having numerically the highest intakes. Several studies have been carried out on intake of red clover, but few experiments have studied the feeding of red clover silage to growing lambs (Fraser et al ., ; Speijers et al ., ; Marley et al ., ; Przemyslaw et al ., ). Those experiments in which RC and other legumes were compared with grass silages over several weeks generally showed higher intakes of legumes, and notably of RC than of grass silage (Speijers et al ., ; Marley et al ., ), and our results confirm these observations.…”

“…In contrast, the RC‐containing silages had high intakes, leading to average daily gains exceeding 210 g d −1 . These growth rates are high compared with those of previous studies that used RC silage as a forage source for store lambs: 114 g d −1 in lightly supplemented 6‐month‐old lambs (Speijers et al ., ), 135 g d −1 for non‐supplemented 8‐month‐old lambs (Marley et al ., ) and 184 g d −1 in greatly supplemented 3‐month‐old lambs (Przemyslaw et al ., ). These high gains were also associated with high feed conversion efficiency (0·189 kg LWG kg −1 DMI on average) which were similar to the highest recorded for RC among the previously cited experiments focusing on store lambs fed on silages (0·192 kg LWG kg −1 DMI, calculated from Przemyslaw et al .…”

“…These high gains were also associated with high feed conversion efficiency (0·189 kg LWG kg −1 DMI on average) which were similar to the highest recorded for RC among the previously cited experiments focusing on store lambs fed on silages (0·192 kg LWG kg −1 DMI, calculated from Przemyslaw et al . () in highly supplemented lambs). Consequently, final live weights in lambs fed the RC‐containing silages were higher than in their counterparts that were fed the T‐SF silage, by more than 5 kg (43·9 kg vs. 38·6 kg), associated with similar observations for carcass weights (3 kg of difference between treatments including RC and T‐SF).…”

“…However, despite their positive effects on animal nutrition, over the last 15 years there have been few studies with ensiled forage legumes used as feed for growing ruminants such as lambs (e.g. Fraser et al ., ; Speijers et al ., ; Hart et al ., ; Przemyslaw et al ., ). The aim of this study was to evaluate in an in vivo trial, the effect of feeding growing lambs with different silage mixtures containing bioactive legumes (SF, RC) and/or grass (timothy (T), Phleum pratense ) on their intake and growth performance.…”