Effect of feeding chemical and microbial treated barley straw on performance and some serum biochemical attributes of Karadi lambs

Fifteen Karadi male lambs (live-weight 25 +/- 0.377 kg and 5 months old) were used to study the effect of feeding lambs with untreated barley straw (US) or urea treated barley straw (UTS) or fungi treated barley straw (FTS) on daily dry matter intake (DMI), live weight gain (LWG), some liver and kidney functions such as glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) and urea-N(SUN) as well as serum glucose SG), total protein (STP) and cholesterol (SC) of karadi lambs were studied. Results revealed that FTS treatment improved DMI and LWG as compared with US or UTS treatments. No significant differences in SG were observed between experimental groups. SUN pointed out to (P<0.05) differences among treatments in favor of chemical treatment which recorded the highest (P<0.01) SUN concentration in comparison with the other treatments. The SUN level ranged from 10 to 25 mg/dl. STP was significant (P<0.01) differences among treatments in favor of fungal treatment which recorded the highest (P<0.01) STP (4.20 mg/dl) in comparison with the other treatments. SC values indicate a significant (P<0.05) differences among treatments in favor of urea and fungi treatments which was the lowest (P<0.05) in comparison with the control group (untreated). GOT and GPT values showed a significant differences among different experimental groups. However, higher (P<0.05) GOT and GPT values were assessed for urea group (10 3 and 28 IU/L), respectively. While, fungi treatment had an intermediate values for GOT and GPT (86 and 24 IU/L) respectively. On contrast, the control groups recorded the lowest (P<0.05) GOT and GPT values, (65 and 20 IU/L). In conclusion, according to the results its seem that the possibility of biological methods of barley straw treatment has a great appeal as an alternative to the use of expensive chemicals.