Effects of milk replacer with different nutritional levels on growth performance and serum biochemical indicators of Hu sheep lambs
WANG Yanyan
GU Lingrong
XU Jianfeng
LIU Tian
GAO Ziyue
WANG Ke
GAO Dengwei
LI Yujie
Abstract：The study aimed to investigate the effects of milk replacer with different nutritional levels on the body weight,body size,and serum biochemical indicators of early-weaned lambs.A total of 60 lambs with a similar initial weight and age(half male and half female)were selected and randomly divided into four groups,with three replicates in each group and five sheep in each replicate.The control group was allowed to nurse from the mother and was weaned naturally.The experimental groups were weaned at 30 days of age,group A,group B and group C were fed milk replacer with high,medium,and low nutritional levels,respectively.The pre-test period was five days and the formal test days was 95 days.The results showed that from 30 to 60 days of age,the average daily weight gain of the control group was significantly higher than that of three experimental groups(P＜0.05).From 60 to 90 days of age,the average daily weight gain of the group B was significantly higher than that of the other groups(P＜0.05).From 90 to 120 days of age,the average daily weight gain of the groups A and B was significantly higher than that of the other groups(P＜0.05).At 60 and 120 days of age,the serum urea nitrogen content in group A was significantly higher than that in the other three groups(P＜0.05).At 60 days of age,the glucose content of the control group was the highest and significantly higher than that of other groups(P＜0.05),and at 120 days of age,the glucose content of groups A and B was significantly higher than the other groups(P＜0.05).At 60 days of age,the concentrations of growth hormone and insulin growth factor-1 in groups A and B were significantly higher than those in the other groups(P＜0.05),and at 120 days of age,the insulin growth factor-1 content in group A was the highest and significantly higher than that of other groups(P＜0.05).The study shows that early weaning combined with milk replacer supplementation can promote lamb growth.The medium nutritional level milk replacer performs best in improving growth performance,body size development and maintaining metabolic health.
Keywords：Hu sheepmilk replacernutritional levelgrowth performance
Publication Date：2025-07-28
Online Publishing Date：2025-09-18(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 17-21 )