Performance of Lambs Fed Rations Supplemented With Thyme Essential Oil

Abstract

ighteen growing Ossimi lambs (28.92 kg average live body weight and 6-7 months old) were used to evaluate incorporating thyme essential oil (TEO) in ration on nutrients digestibility and growth performance. In growth trial lasted 90 days followed by digestibility trial for 14 days, the lambs were randomly divided according to their live body weight into three feeding groups (6 each).Total mixed ration consisted of 60% concentrate: 40% roughage was offered to lambs in all groups to cover its total requirements. Whereas, there was no TEO in the control feeding group, R1, while R2 and R3 were supplemented with 0.1 and 0.2% TEO from DM intake, respectively. Data of nutrients digestibility indicated that incorporating TEO in both of R2 and R3 significantly (P<0.05) increased digestibility of DM, OM, CP, EE and NFE. While, EE digestibility was only significantly (P<0.05) increased in R3 compared with R1. The same trend was observed for nutritive value either as TDN or DCP, whereas it was significantly (P<0.05) improved with R2 and R3 compared with R1.There were no adverse effects for thyme oil supplementation on rumen pH, but significant (P<0.05) decreased rumen ammonia concentration and increased the rumen volatile fatty acids compared with control group. As a result of this improvement in nutritive value, the highest significant (P<0.05) body weight gains were recorded with R3 (200 g/h/d) followed by R2 (187 g/h/d) compared to 160 g/h/d for R1. So, it can be concluded that incorporating thyme essential oil in growing lambs ration by either 0.1 or 0.2% from DM intake improved both of nutrients digestibility and growth performance.

Impact of Adding Ajwain Seeds to the Male Lambs’ Rations as Growth Promoters

“…Whatever its concentration significantly decreased (P<0.05) with increasing the addition of ajwain seeds, this decrease may be due to that some essential oils included in the seeds have activity impact antihyper-NH 3producing ruminal bacteria such as Peptostreptococcus anaerobic and as Clostridium astyklandy (6,7,20), also may be regarded to protein binding substances existing in ajwain seeds like tannins which might be reduced dietary protein degradability (11). The same results for the decreasing of ammonia nitrogen concentration were recorded by fistulated buffalo fed various parts of the ajwain plant (30) and with lambs fed diets supplemented with thyme essential oil (14). The overall mean of rumen total volatile fatty acids significantly (P<0.05) increased linearly with T2 and T3 by 4.21 and 18.72 %, respectively compared with T1.…”

“…Data in Table 4 showed that there were no significant differences among groups in the initial and final body weight of lambs fed experimental rations, however adding ajwain seeds significantly (P<0.05) increased average daily gain by 12.76 and 17.70 %, respectively compared with those fed T1. These increases might be attributed to the high TDN and nutrient digestibility with T2 and T3, regarding to the presence content of essential oils in ajwain seed which increases the energy availability for animals (14,39). Adding ajwain seed in the basal ration did not show any impact on feed intake.…”

Natural and Biological Dietary Herbal Extracts Supplement on Productive and Physiological Parameters, Cecal Fermentation, and Meat Characteristics of Growing Rabbits

“…Researchers and breeders are searching for feed additives to improve animal performance, nutritional content, and eventually carcass qualities. Extracts from known herbs, as garlic, clove, thyme, turmeric, and cinnamon can be utilized as natural feed supplement in livestock feed (El-Naggar et al, 2017). The biological properties of herbal phytochemical compounds, or their extracts, are beneficial to the health and contributes to improve animal performance, intestinal microbiota, antioxidant capacity, antimicrobial, antibiotic, cholesterol reduction, immune modulatory, and eventually in enhancing carcass characteristics and quality of meat to the human as the end consumer, (Elsherif et al, 2021;Lamiaa et al, 2022).…”

“…Additionally, thyme contains antibacterial and antioxidant characteristics. This is mostly because of its active ingredients such as thymol, phenols and carvacrol, which also increase appetite and have been shown to support growth performance (El-Naggar et al 2017;Raskovic et al, 2015).…”

To What Extent Dry Moringa Oleifera Leaves Supplementation Couldinfluence Growth Performance of Sheep and Affect Methane Production.

“…Nowadays, numerous feed additives are available and efficiently used in the daily feeding practices of beef and dairy farm stations. Unsaturated fatty acids, essential-sulfur-containing amino acids, vitamins, chelated minerals, organic acids, ionophores, probiotics (Helal et al, 2021), prebiotics, and plant extracts and their secondary metabolites (El-Naggar et al 2017a), all are being used as feed supplements to enhance feed utilization and promote animal productivity (Soliva et al 2005;. In tropical and subtropical regions where good quality forages are scarcely available, so the use of fodder trees, browses and shrubs had been confirmed for ruminant feeding (Benninson and I Paterson, 2003).…”