The Potential Interaction between Nutrition of Twin-Bearing Ewes' and the Performance Growth of their Newborns

Abstract

The purpose was to determine impact of nutritional treatments containing energy and protein on ewes body condition score (BCS), body weight (BW), milk production, newborn of lambs behavior and blood parameters of twin-bearing ewes. At trimester of pregnancy, one hundred-fifty shearing Rahmani ewes had been scanned to choose twin-bearing ewes. Then, twenty-four ewes had been diagnosed twinbearing actually. They age from 3 to 4 years, BW 51.30±0.39 kg and BCS 2.54±0.16 (on a scale of 1 to 5). They were allocated to 3 rd nutritional treatments (n=8/ treatment). Ewes in T1 were received rations consisted of concentrate fed mixture (CFM) + roughage included berseem hay (BH) + rice straw (RS). However ewes in T2 and T3 were fed the previous ration addition with protected fat (PF) and corn steep liquor (CSL), respictevely. Then, T1, T2 and T3 were offered from 100 day until weaning according to NRC (2007). Resulting indicated that either T2 or T3 to twin-bearing ewe from trimester of pregnancy to weaning could be achieved the greatest (P<0.05) BW and BCS, improvement (P<0.05) of lambs behavior, more amount of suckling milk , composition, had more (P<0.05) lambs' body weight and verity serum blood metabolic than those ewes in T1 ration. Then, this study concluded that it is optimal for farmers to addition either energy (as 4% PF) or protein (as 20% CSL) to rations which have benefit for twin-bearing ewe without any losses in twin-bearing and performance growth of their newborns.