Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa.

Lovelyn Mushunje; Tawanda Marandure; Obert Chikwana; James Bennett; Heidi-Jayne Hawkins; Anthony Palmer; Lianhai Wu; Munyaradzi Marufu; Cletos Mapiye

doi:10.1007/s11250-024-04004-z

Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa.

Lovelyn Mushunje, Tawanda Marandure, Obert Chikwana, James Bennett, Heidi-Jayne Hawkins, Anthony Palmer, Lianhai Wu, Munyaradzi Marufu, Cletos Mapiye

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

44 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Supplementing livestock grazing communal rangelands with leaf-meals from Acacia trees, which are currently considered as problematic invasive alien plants globally, may be a sustainable way of exploiting their desirable nutritional and anthelmintic properties. The current study evaluated worm burdens and growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands supplemented with leaf-meals prepared from the invasive alien plant species; Acacia mearnsii or
A. dealbata. Forty, three-month-old ewe lambs weighing an average of 18.9±0.60 kg were randomly allocated to four supplementary diets: (1) rangeland hay only (control), (2) commercial protein supplement plus rangeland hay, (3) A. mearnsii leaf-meal plus rangeland hay and (4) A. dealbata leaf-meal plus rangeland hay. All the supplementary diets were formulated to meet the lambs’ minimum maintenance requirements for protein. All the lambs were grazed on communal
rangelands daily from 0800 to 1400 after which they were penned to allow them access to their respective supplementary diets until 08:00 the following morning. The respective supplementary diets were offered at the rate of 400 g ewe−1 day−1 for 60 days. Lambs fed the commercial protein supplement had the highest dry matter intake followed by those fed the Acacia leaf-meals and the control diet, respectively (P≤0.05). Relative to the other supplementary diets, lambs fed
the commercial protein supplement and A. dealbata leaf-meal had higher (P≤0.05) final body weight and average daily gains. Dietary supplementation did not affect lamb faecal worm egg counts over the study period (P>0.05). There was no association between supplementary diets and lamb FAMACHA© scores (P>0.05). It was concluded that supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii has the potential to emulate commercial protein in maintaining growth
performance of lambs grazing communal rangelands in the dry season.

Original language	English
Article number	152
Number of pages	9
Journal	Tropical Animal Health and Production
Volume	56
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-024-04004-z
Publication status	Published - 9 May 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funder

Open access funding provided by Stellenbosch University. This work was supported by a collaborative Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-Global Challenges Research Fund (BBSRC-GCRF) funded project (Grant 628 number: BB/S014683/1).

Keywords

Acacia foliage, Faecal egg count
Growth performance
Polyphenols
South Africa

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Food Animals
Animal Science and Zoology

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10.1007/s11250-024-04004-zLicence: CC BY

Bennett2024VoRFinal published version, 1.5 MBLicence: CC BY
Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal maintain growth performance of lambs Final online May 2024Final published version, 1.31 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

Mushunje, L., Marandure, T., Chikwana, O., Bennett, J., Hawkins, H.-J., Palmer, A., Wu, L., Marufu, M., & Mapiye, C. (2024). Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa. Tropical Animal Health and Production, 56, Article 152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-024-04004-z

Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa. / Mushunje, Lovelyn; Marandure, Tawanda; Chikwana, Obert et al.
In: Tropical Animal Health and Production, Vol. 56, 152, 09.05.2024.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Mushunje, L, Marandure, T, Chikwana, O, Bennett, J, Hawkins, H-J, Palmer, A, Wu, L, Marufu, M & Mapiye, C 2024, 'Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa.', Tropical Animal Health and Production, vol. 56, 152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-024-04004-z

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abstract = "Supplementing livestock grazing communal rangelands with leaf-meals from Acacia trees, which are currently considered as problematic invasive alien plants globally, may be a sustainable way of exploiting their desirable nutritional and anthelmintic properties. The current study evaluated worm burdens and growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands supplemented with leaf-meals prepared from the invasive alien plant species; Acacia mearnsii or A. dealbata. Forty, three-month-old ewe lambs weighing an average of 18.9±0.60 kg were randomly allocated to four supplementary diets: (1) rangeland hay only (control), (2) commercial protein supplement plus rangeland hay, (3) A. mearnsii leaf-meal plus rangeland hay and (4) A. dealbata leaf-meal plus rangeland hay. All the supplementary diets were formulated to meet the lambs{\textquoteright} minimum maintenance requirements for protein. All the lambs were grazed on communal rangelands daily from 0800 to 1400 after which they were penned to allow them access to their respective supplementary diets until 08:00 the following morning. The respective supplementary diets were offered at the rate of 400 g ewe−1 day−1 for 60 days. Lambs fed the commercial protein supplement had the highest dry matter intake followed by those fed the Acacia leaf-meals and the control diet, respectively (P≤0.05). Relative to the other supplementary diets, lambs fed the commercial protein supplement and A. dealbata leaf-meal had higher (P≤0.05) final body weight and average daily gains. Dietary supplementation did not affect lamb faecal worm egg counts over the study period (P>0.05). There was no association between supplementary diets and lamb FAMACHA{\textcopyright} scores (P>0.05). It was concluded that supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii has the potential to emulate commercial protein in maintaining growth performance of lambs grazing communal rangelands in the dry season.",

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Supplementation of Acacia dealbata versus Acacia mearnsii leaf-meal has potential to maintain growth performance of lambs grazing low-quality communal rangelands in South Africa.

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funder

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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