Whole cottonseed in diets without roughage for feedlot lambs

The objective of this work was to evaluate the performance, intake, feeding behavior, costs of production and nutritional parameters of sheep fed diets containing different levels of whole cottonseed (WC): zero, 10, 20, 30 and 40%. Two experiments have been carried out, in which in the first trial we have used a completely randomized design with five treatments and six replicates each, which lasted 70 days. The animals were kept in collective stalls and all of them have been weighed at the beginning and end of the experiment. The second experiment was a 5x5 Latin square design with five treatments and five animals divided in five periods of 14 days, totaling 70 days of experimentation. The intakes of the DM, OM, EE, NDF and NFC ave been not affected by WC levels (P>0.01). The WC levels had quadratic affect only on EE digestibility (P<0.01) and there were no observed effects on digestibility for other nutrients (P>0.05). There were no effects (P>0.05) of whole cottonseed on average daily gain with average of 200.8g/animal/day, as well as there was no effect of the WC levels on intake behavior. A gross margins of R$ 0.18 to 0.19 per animal / day was observed for WC levels of 10 to 20%. Thus, it was concluded that whole cottonseed can be included in lambs diets up 20% of dry matter basis in which roughage has been not used.