Productive performance and urinary excretion of mimosine metabolites by hair sheep grazing in a silvopastoral system with high densities of Leucaena leucocephala

• Published in: Tropical animal health and production 2012-12, Vol.44 (8), p.1873-1878
• Main Authors: Barros-Rodríguez, Marcos, Solorio-Sánchez, Javier, Ku-Vera, Juan, Ayala-Burgos, Armín, Sandoval-Castro, Carlos, Solís-Pérez, Georgina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal Feed - analysis; Animal Husbandry; Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Animals; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Color; Colorimetry - veterinary; Cynodon; Degradability; Digestion; Dry matter; Excretion; Fabaceae; Feeding Behavior; Grasses; Grazing; Hair; Ingestion; Leucaena; Leucaena leucocephala; Life Sciences; Male; Metabolites; Mexico; mimosine; Mimosine - analogs & derivatives; Mimosine - metabolism; Mimosine - urine; Original Research; Panicum maximum; Random Allocation; Rumen; Rumen - metabolism; Sheep; Sheep, Domestic - physiology; Side effects; Tropical Climate; Urine; Veterinary Medicine/Veterinary Science; Zoology
• ISSN: 0049-4747; 1573-7438
• DOI: 10.1007/s11250-012-0150-0

The aim of this study was to evaluate daily weight gain (DWG), total dry matter (DM) intake, rumen degradability of forage, and urinary excretion of mimosine metabolites by hair sheep in a silvopastoral system with high densities of Leucaena leucocephala . A completely randomized design was carried out with two treatments: treatment 1 (T1) silvopastoral system with leucaena at a density of 35,000 plants/ha and treatment 2 (T2), leucaena at a density of 55,000 plants/ha. Leucaena was associated with tropical grasses Panicum maximum and Cynodon nlemfluensis . Twenty-four male Pelibuey lambs of 23.2 ± 3.4 kg live weight (LW) were used (12 lambs per treatment). Results showed differences ( P