Vol. 10, Special Issue 12 (2025)

Author(s): Jagadamba Kunja, Ch. Hari Krishna, P Amareswari, G Deepika Kumari and M Venkateswarlu

Abstract: Thirty-two growing Nellore brown ram lambs (96.30±2.70 days of age and 13.27±0.03 kg body weight) were used to evaluate the effect of pulse chunni inclusion in sorghum straw based complete diets on growth performance, feed conversion efficiency and carcass characteristics. Lambs were fed finishing diets and assigned randomly to one of three dietary treatments for a period of 120 days under intensive system at Sheep unit, Livestock Research Station, Mamnoor, Warangal. Treatment diets were complete diet without any pulse chunni-control (T₁; N=8), 15% red gram chunni included complete diet-RGCC (T₂; N=8), 15% green gram chunni included complete diet-GGCC (T₃; N=8) and 15% Bengal gram chunni included complete diet-BGCC (T₄; N=8). Among physiological parameters studied, test diets did not alter rectal temperature, respiration rate and pulse rate of ram lambs in the morning as well as evening and these parameters were within the normal range, while period had highly significant (p<0.01) effect on overall values of physiological parameters in ram lambs. The lymphocyte (%) and monocyte (%) values throughout the experiment were statistically non-significant among four test groups. At the end of the experiment, significant (p<0.01) difference observed in neutrophil (%) and at the middle of the study, significant (p<0.01) difference observed in eosinophil (%) among four groups.

DOI: 10.22271/veterinary.2025.v10.i12Sb.2849