effects of supplementary feeding on growth and carcass characteristics of fat-tailed lambs grazing cereal stubble

despite a shortage of animal feed in iran, cereal stubble is often underutilized due to agro-economic reasons. on the other hand, lambs fed with a conventional fattening ration deposit a considerable amount of fat; therefore, this experiment was conducted aimed at better utilization of cereal stubble and reducing the fat content of lamb carcasses. fat-tailed mehraban and ghezel ram lambs were put on four feeding systems (fs) for 100 days. animals in one group (fs1) were lot-fed with a conventional fattening ration (4% of the mean body weight) consisting of 50% ground barley and 50% chopped alfalfa hay. fs2, fs3 and fs4 animals grazed stubbles, and in the evening, received 2% of their body weights either ground barley (fs2), a mixture (50:50 dm basis) of ground barley and alfalfa hay (fs3), or ground alfalfa hay (fs4). daily gain, slaughter weight, and tail weight were greatest (p