EFFECT OF USING TREATED DATE PALM LEAVES ON THE BODY CONDITION SCORE IN AWAASI EWES

Abstract

Shortage in the roughages availability for ruminats ration have increased the demand for high-fiber ingredients of low cost .Therefor this eXperiment was estableshed to study effect of feeding date pal leaves urea treated on the body condition in awaasi ewes . Forty eight Awassi ewes 2-7 years of age with average body weight of 40.73 kg were blocked to live body weight and allocated randomly to three treatment , . All wews were divided into 3 groups each of 16 ewes . The ewes of treatment 1 were fed acontrol ration containing 0% palm leaves , while treatment 2 and 3 were fed the same control ration conaining 20 and 30% palm leaves respectively for a period of 8 weeks.The palm leaves were ground and treated with urea. A flushing feeding program of ewes . The results of the experiment showed the followings : 1. Possibility of using palm leaves in ewes feeding were not showed any troubles and bad effect in ewes . 2. There were no significant difference among the ewe groups in the final body weights . 3. There were significant (p<0.05) in average body weight gains of the treatment 1,3 comparison treatment 2, there were no significant difference between treatent 1,3 4. The feed dry matter intake of the ration 0% , 20% and 30% palm leaves were similer between the all treatment . 5. The ewes of treatments 1 and 3 were significatly superior to those of treatment 2 in feed conversion values 6.There was no significant differnce in mean body condition among the ewes in first measured , when second measured were improved significantly (p‹0.01) for the one treatment ewes, significantly ( p‹0.05) for the third treatment and no significantly for the second treatment ewes .