Abstract:
Animal Production in Australia Vol. 15 FATTENING LAMBS ON PREDOMINANTLY WHEAT DIETS F.B. DONNELLY* and K.J. MORRISON** Variable but generally disappointing weight gains have been obtained with wheat in lamb fattening experiments (McManus et a1. 1971; Davis 1977) and the inclusion of good quality hay as 20% to 40% of a roughage and grain diet is recommended for successfully fattening store lambs (Bell et al. 1981). Scarcity and very high cost of suitable hay in the latter part of the 1982/83 drought forced us to rely on wheat as the main diet ingredient in our attempt to fatten six groups of wheat accustomed eight to eleven month old BL x Merino wether lambs. These lambs ate from troughs the feed mixtures (see Table 1) continuously available to them. The amount of feed eaten was recorded and lambs were weighed full at approximately 2 weekly intervals. Groups 1 to 4, fed for 41 days and then sold to the local abattoir, had 13% CP commercial pellets included in their feed. These pellets contained by per cent wheat 89.6, oats 5, sulphate of ammonia 0.1, urea 1, Christmas phos 0.3, salt 0.4, lime 1.5 and sodium bentonite 2, Groups 5 and 6 were fed for 64 daysrstraight after the other groupsrand sold similarly. The wheat grain fed to all groups contained 14.4% CP, 2.77% ADF and had an estimated 13.1 MJ ME/kg DM. Digestibility was 87.4%. Feed intake (FI) liveweight gain (LWG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of the lambs is shown in Table 1. TABLE 1 Performance of 6 lamb groups on wheat based mixtures Our investigations indicate that an excellent response is possible from wheat accustomed lambs when they are fed a fattening ration containing over 80% wheat and only 4% hay together,with lime salt and sodium bentonite in a feed lot. BELL, A; SIMPSON, I. and GILBERT, D. (1981). Dept. of Agric. Agfact A3.5.1. DAVIS, C.H., (1977) Final Report on AMRC Sheep Project DAN 11s. M&ANUS, W.R.; BIGHAM, M.L. and EDWARDS, G.B.(197l) Aust. J. Agric. Res. 23:331. * N.S.W. Department of Agriculture, Parkes, N.S.W. 2870 ** 'Little Dale', Daroobalgie via Forbes, N.S.W. 2871 (R) Rumensin is a product of Elanco Products Co. Wharf Rd. West Ryde, N.S.W. 671