ANBAR JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

Abstract

The study was carried out at the sheep Farm of the Animal Resources Departement, College of Agriculture, University of Anbar during the period of 16/6/2012 until 1/9/2012. The objective of the study was to examine the effect of replacement of liqurice plant ; ( roots or stems ) for barley grain . Three concentrate diets were used; a control diet which contain no liqurice plant, treatment 1 (T1) which contain 5% liqurice roots and treatment 2 (T2) which contain 10% liqurice stems and leaves . Eighteen young ewes were used in this study. Ewes were divided into three groups based on their body weights to investigate the influence of the liqurice diets on the performance and some reproductive and physiological traits conditions. The results of this study show the following : The addition of 5% liqurice plant (root) in T1, and 10% ( leaves and stems) in T2 in the concentrate diets significantly (p ≤ 0.05) decreased rectal temperature and the results were 39.50, 39.66, 39.99 celcius for T2 , T1 and control diets respectively. There were no significant effects due to the addition of liqurice plant on final body weights of sheep and the result were 38.99, 39.36, 38.18 kg for the control, T1 and T2 diets respectively. Daily weight gain of T2 diet was significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher (237.37 g /d) than T1 diet (208.57 g / d ). However , both T1 and T2 diets were not significantly different than the control diet (227.60 g / d ) . Feed conversion ratio (FCR) significantly improved (p ≤ 0.05) in T2 compared to T1, however, both T1 and T2 were not significantly different with the control treatment and the ratios were 7.15, 7.25, and 6.58 for the control, T1, and T2 treatments respectively. Treatment with liqurice plant significantly ( P≤0.05 ) increased concentration of estrogen and progesterone. On the contrary, there were no differences regarding the concentrations of cortisol and FSH levels, but there was a significant increase (P≤0.05) in the concentration of LH in the control compared with T2 diet.