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ABSTRACT
The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of diets with inclusion of beef tallow on growth, and carcass characteristics, meat quality, and lipid profile in growing lambs. The experiment was conducted with 15 lambs for 63 days. The lambs were randomly allotted into three dietary treatments (T0, T1, and T2) with five animals in each group; T0 (control diet without beef tallow), T1 (diet with 2% beef tallow), and T2 (diet with 4% beef tallow). The body weight and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were significantly (P<0.05) increased in T1 group as compared to other groups. Dressing percentages of warm carcass in T0, T1 and T2 group were 43.93, 42.87 and 44.05%, respectively. There were no significant differences (P>0.05) on meat quality and chemical composition among the three dietary groups. Group T1 showed the highest increase of cholesterol concentration (11.5%) at the end of experiment, but serum triglyceride concentration was not significantly (P>0.05) correlated with any of the three dietary groups. To sum up, the use of beef tallow at 2% level in lamb diet can increase their performance without having any deleterious effect on carcass, meat quality and lipid profile.
Keywords
Beef tallow, Carcass, Lamb, Lipid profile
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received : 13 May 2015, Revised: 22 June 2015,
Accepted : 5 July 2015, Published online: 5 July 2015.
INTRODUCTION
The sheep of South Asian countries are renowned due to their early maturity, high prolificacy, good quality of meat, immunity and adaptability to adverse climatic condition (Nielsen et al., 2013). However, the profitable sheep production is hindered due to low energy intake, lack of improved quality feeds, and high feed cost. In Bangladesh, people mostly rear their sheep under traditional system of grazing with little or no concentrate supplementation hampering optimum weight gain and reproductive performance. Sheep production can be made more profitable by adding concentrate as a supplementary source of dietary energy. Unconventional feed such as fats of animal origin (e.g., beef tallow) can be used in sheep ration for better growth rate (Steele, 1985).
Lipid provides more energy value than carbohydrates because it contains more carbon and hydrogen atoms than carbohydrates but the dietary level of fat should not exceed 6 to 7% of dry matter (Doreau et al.,...