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Nutritional Value of Date Seeds for Sheep

Faculty of Agriculture, University of Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

Digestibility trials with three adult Barki rams showed that TDN and Apparent dry matter digestibility for ground date seeds were improved by the addition of 15 gm. urea; these increases were 67.34, 69.09 and 58.14 to 66.90, respectively. Digestibility of fat and crude fiber were depressed by the addition of urea.

Rate of gain and feed efficiency resulting from feeding ram lambs on wheat straw with either rice-bran-cottonseed-cake, rice-bran-urea or date-seeds-urea-cottonseed-cake supplementsgave poorer rate of growth for the rice bran-urea ration. The date-seeds-urea-cottonseed-cakesupplement was utilized more efficiently than the other two concentrate mixtures.

It is concluded that date seeds can be utilized for feeding sheep if a good protein supplement, such as cottonseed cake, is added. It has a higher TDN value than oil extracted rice bran. Furthermore, it contains a relatively high percent of oil with a high coefficient of digestibility.

¹ The oil contents were estimated by A. A. Joseph, to whom we are greatly indebted.