Performance of Local Sheep Fed Diets Containing Urea-Impregnated Zeolite
Performance of Local Sheep Fed Diets Containing Urea-Impregnated Zeolite
Dede Kardaya*, Deden Sudrajat, Dewi Wahyuni
ABSTRACT
The main constraint in sheep rearing is the high price of protein source feed in tropical regions. Therefore, in this study, we substituted protein sources of the feed with urea which was processed with slow-release technology to avoid urea poisoning. Slow-release urea-impregnated zeolite (UZ) and Indonesia’s natural zeolite (Z) were examined using 24 heads of seven-eight months old of local male lambs (20.12 ± 2.1 kg BW) allotted to four treatments in a randomized group design to determine how it affects lamb performances. The treatments were rations containing no urea (NU), urea (U), zeolite (Z), and urea-impregnated zeolite (UZ). Zeolite or urea-impregnated zeolite inclusion into field grass-based diets of lamb maintained feed intake level, improved dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF) and hemicellulose digestibility (P<0.05), and increased feed efficiency and live weight gain of lambs (P<0.05). It is implicated that zeolite or urea-impregnated zeolite improves lamb performances probably as a result of the cation exchange capacity of zeolite or slow-release characteristics of urea-impregnated zeolite.
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