Twenty four growing lambs, which were apparently healthy, of nearly the same body weight (approx. 22.29kg) were used in this study to investigate the effect of garlic extract supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestibility and some blood serum parameters of growing lambs. Lambs were allotted into two equal groups, first group fed on the basal diet without any supplement while 2nd group fed on the basal diet and garlic extract (garlin) in drinking water for continuous 12 weeks. It was found that allicin supplementation non significantly improved body weight of growing fattening lambs at the end of the experiment by about 0.52% when compared with control. Moreover. Statistical analysis of the obtained data indicated that garlic extract supplementation (62.5 mg allicin/L water) non significantly improved total body gain of growing lambs by about 4.9%, improved feed conversion ratio by about 5.1%, moreover, garlic extract supplementation improve TDN and digestible protein conversion ratio by about 16.1% and 17.2% respectively when compared with control. Also, garlic extract supplementation had no ffect on nutrient digestibility, while non significantly increased blood serum total protein, globulin and glucose concentrations and had no effect on calcium and phosphorus blood serum concentration when compared with the control. On the other hand, it can be concluded that garlic extract supplementation in drinking water for growing lambs may be slightly reduce efficiency of kidney and liver function through numerical higher creatinine, GOT and GPT blood serum concentrations throughout the whole experimental period when compared with the control and non significantly reduced blood serum triglycerides and total cholesterol. generally, garlic extract had no significant effect on growth performance of growing lambs and no effect on economical efficiency of production.
Key words: Garlic extract, Growing lambs, growth performance, Nutrient digestibility
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