تعيين و مقايسه ارزش غذايي دوگونه گياه مرتعي ، درمنه كوهي و درمنه دشتي در گوسفند

Determination and comparison of feeding value of Artemisia aucheri and Artemisia siberi in sheep

An experiment was carried out to determine the nutritive value (chemical composition, voluntary feed intake and digestibility) of two Artemisia species of Art. Sieberi and Art. Aucheri. These species grow in arid and semi-arid rangeland, of Iran. The experimental plants were fed to two groups of 4 castrated adult rams, which were kept in individual metabolic cages. The results obtained were as follows: the means of daily feed intake (kg/DM), ratio of feed intake to body weight (percent) and feed intake per kg metabolic body weight (W0.75) respectively were for Art. Sieberi 0.583, 1.445 and 34.353 and for Art. Aucheri were 0.552, 1.335 and 33.855, respectively. The difference between the forage species were statistically significant in ratio feed intak per body weight (P<0.01). Means of organic matter digestibility (OM), crude protein (CP) and crude fiber (CF) of Art. Siberi were 55.68, 61.17 and 58.28, respectively and for Art. Auchery were 53.06, 50.88 and 64.44 percent, and difference between species were statisticalley significant (P<0.05) in OM, CP and the CF (P<0.01). The means of total digestible nutrients (%TDN) and digsetible energy (DE/Mcal/Kg DM) of Art. Siebery were 55.177 and 2.616 and for Art. Aucheri were 51.77 and 2.493, respectively. The results of the experiment showed that nutritive value and chemical composition of the Art.sieberi were higher than the Art. aucheri.