الفهرس 
1. INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The current study was carried out to investigate the effect of replacing corn silage (CS) with duckweed silage (DWS) on performance of growing Barki lambs fed one of the following rations: R1 (control): 2% of body weight (BW) concentrate feed mixture (CFM) + CS, R2: 1.5 % of BW (CFM + DWS), R3: 1.75 % of BW (CFM + DWS), and R4: 2% of BW (CFM + DWS). In all groups, laboratory tests of silages revealed that the silages had a pleasant odor and were free of molds. A digestibility trial was conducted using twelve mature local Barki breed were divided into four groups ( three animals of each). Animals in group R3 had the highest (P<0.05) digestibility coefficients for all nutrients and nutritive value than animals in other groups. The digestibility coefficients of NDF, ADF, and cellulose in R3 were significantly higher (P≤0.05) than in the one in the other groups. In all blood parameters, there were in significant differences (P>0.05) among the three groups. Twenty Barki lambs with an average body weight of 20.00±2.0 kg/head were used in feedlot trials. Lambs were divided into four groups (5 animals of each) and fed the four rations using the same feeding regimen. R3 detected the highest feed conversion (g DM/g gain) value (4.43), followed by R2 (4.76), R1 (5.51) then R4 (5.65). Under these experimental conditions, it was concluded that replacing corn silage by duckweed silage in the rations of growing Barki lambs could improve their performance, digestibility, average daily gain, and feed conversion.