Abstract:

To study the effect of garlic straw feeding on weight gain and mutton quality of Small Tailed Han sheep, 30 Small Tailed Han sheep were randomly divided, according to different proportions of garlic straw in roughage, into experimental group 1, experimental group 2 and control group, ten sheep in each group. The related indexes such as different feed nutrients, feed intake, daily gain, the occurrence of intestinal diseases and mutton quality of Small Tail Han sheep in different groups were determined. Compared with corn feed and corn straw, the content of calcium and crude fiber in fresh garlic straw is relatively high, and the content of allicin is 17.80 mg/100 g. The results indicate that garlic straw feed proportion has significant influence on weight gain of mutton sheep,with the increase of adding proportion, the weight gain of mutton sheep is significantly promoted. The daily weight gain of test group 1 and 2 is 35.29% and 17.65% higher than that of control group. Garlic straw feeding could significantly improve the content of unsaturated fatty acids and saturated fatty acids in mutton. Under the condition of high garlic straw proportion of crude materials (70% in this experiment), the content of unsaturated fatty acids cis-9-oleic acid and linoleic acid in mutton is increased by 370.58% and 60.70% respectively compared with the control. The restricted amino acids, essential amino acids and meat flavor amino acids in mutton are increased by 4.98%, 3.82% and 1.51% respectively compared with the control. The results show that garlic straw as the main ingredient of roughage could significantly promote the weight gain and quality of mutton compared with conventional silage corn as the main ingredient feeding.

Key words: garlic straw, Small Tailed Han sheep, daily weight gain, mutton quality