EFFECTS OF BROILER-MEAT MEAL ON PERFORMANCE AND CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS OF CROSSBRED HAIR LAMBS

The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the effect of different levels of broiler-meat meal (BM; by-products of meat and visceras coming from broiler processing plants) in finishing diets for feedlot crossbred hair lambs on their growth performance and carcass characteristics. Sixty-four intact male lambs (Pelibuey x Katadin x BlackBelly: 30.28 ± 1.8 kg) were fed for 56 d one of four dietary treatments: T1: control without BM, T2: 2.5% BM, T3: 5.0% BM, and T4: 7.5% BM. All diets contained 16.7% crude protein (CP) and 2.8 Mcal ME/kg DM; with ruminal undegradable protein (RUP) ranging between 25.5 and 27.2%.Dietary BM did not influence feed intake, feed efficiency, biological dressing percentage and gastrointestinal content. On the other hand, maximum average daily gain (ADG; 271 g/day) was observed in T2 lambs, while lambs receiving other levels of BM gained weight in the range of 182–245 g/ day.BM not only showed better growth performance and commercial dressing percentage in lambs fed low levels of BM (2.5%) than higher levels of this protein source. These results indicate that there is the potential for inclusion of 2.5% BM in finishing diets for hair lambs.