An 8-week feeding trial was conducted to assess the effect of soybean meal (SBM), groundnut meal (GNM) and blood meal (BM) addition in diets with or without (1%) fishmeal on the performance, N-digestibility an...An 8-week feeding trial was conducted to assess the effect of soybean meal (SBM), groundnut meal (GNM) and blood meal (BM) addition in diets with or without (1%) fishmeal on the performance, N-digestibility and cost of production of growing grasscutters. Fifty-four grasscutters (9-week-old) of mixed sexes were randomly assigned to six dietary treatments, using a completely randomized design (CRD) in a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement, with three grasscutters per treatment and three replicates each. Treatments 1-3 (TI-T3) contained no fishmeal, whilst treatments 4-6 (T4-T6) had 1% fishmeal added. The diets were formulated to be isocaloric and isonitrogenous. N-digestibility was significantly high for SBM diets with or without fishmeal, 83.91% and 82.19%, respectively, followed by BM diets. Average daily gain (ADG) was significantly (P 〈 0.05) high (12.95 g) for BM diet without fishmeal. Feed cost per kg diet was the lowest (US$0.195) for the same BM diet. The results indicated that the inclusion of SBM and BM in the diet of grasscutters with or without 1% fishmeal could improve performance and it may be the most economical for feeding BM in the diet without fishmeal.展开更多
文摘An 8-week feeding trial was conducted to assess the effect of soybean meal (SBM), groundnut meal (GNM) and blood meal (BM) addition in diets with or without (1%) fishmeal on the performance, N-digestibility and cost of production of growing grasscutters. Fifty-four grasscutters (9-week-old) of mixed sexes were randomly assigned to six dietary treatments, using a completely randomized design (CRD) in a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement, with three grasscutters per treatment and three replicates each. Treatments 1-3 (TI-T3) contained no fishmeal, whilst treatments 4-6 (T4-T6) had 1% fishmeal added. The diets were formulated to be isocaloric and isonitrogenous. N-digestibility was significantly high for SBM diets with or without fishmeal, 83.91% and 82.19%, respectively, followed by BM diets. Average daily gain (ADG) was significantly (P 〈 0.05) high (12.95 g) for BM diet without fishmeal. Feed cost per kg diet was the lowest (US$0.195) for the same BM diet. The results indicated that the inclusion of SBM and BM in the diet of grasscutters with or without 1% fishmeal could improve performance and it may be the most economical for feeding BM in the diet without fishmeal.