Effects of Feeding Pistachio By-Products on Hematology and Performance of Balouchi Lambs

A study was carried out to investigate the possibility of feeding high level of Pistachio By-products (PB) to Balouchi lambs. Twenty-eight male lambs, with initial weight of 18.3 +/- 1.9 kg were allocated to 4 dietary treatments in a completely randomized designed for a period of 3 months. Four diets containing 0, 10, 20 and 30% PB were fed to the lambs in TMR ad-labium form. The average final live weight of lambs that allocated to diets contained 0, 10, 20 and 30% of PB were 40.0, 41.0, 38.7 and 40.0 kg at the end of the experiment, respectively. Mean daily weight gain was also 224.5, 259.4, 221.0 and 215.6 g day(-1), respectively. The respective average feed intake was 1182.8, 1215.7, 1181.1 and 1161.5 g day(-1). Feed conversion ratio was 6.73, 6.22, 7.56 and 7.11 for the above diets. Diet containing high levels of PB did not affected the daily weight gain, live weight and feed conversion ratio of the lambs (p>0.05). Such trend was found for some other parameters such as slaughter and dissection data of the experimental animals. There were no significant effect of treatments on all hematology parameters (p>0.05). It can be concluded that PB could be fed up to 30% to the fattening lambs without any adverse effects on performance and health parameters.