=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3293/paper12
|storemode=property
|title=Legume Grains as Alternative to Soybean in the Diet of Dairy Ewes - Abstract
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper12.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=Sotiria Vouraki,Vasiliki Papanikolopoulou,Eleni M. Abraham,Zoi Parissi,Georgios Arsenos
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/VourakiPAPA22
}}
==Legume Grains as Alternative to Soybean in the Diet of Dairy Ewes - Abstract==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper12.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
Legume Grains as Alternative to Soybean in the Diet of Dairy
Ewes - Abstract
Sotiria Vouraki 1, Vasiliki Papanikolopoulou 1, Eleni M. Abraham 2, Zoi Parissi 2 and Georgios
Arsenos 1
1
  School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University Campus, Thessaloniki, 54124,
Greece
2
  School of Forestry and Natural Development, Aristotle University Campus, Thessaloniki, 54124, Greece


                Summary
                Legumes are feedstuffs with high nutritional value and can be used to substitute or replace
                soybean in ruminant nutrition. The latter could contribute both to economic efficiency and
                environmental sustainability. However, the notion is that legumes contain antinutritional and
                toxic factors, which might compromise animal performance. The objective here was to assess
                whether replacing soybean with a mixture of legume grains (lupin, pea, vetch, faba bean) could
                affect milk production and body condition score (BCS) of intensively reared dairy ewes. A
                total of 40 Chios dairy ewes at the third month of first to fifth lactation period were randomly
                selected from a purebred flock. Ewes were allocated in two (n=20) groups (control C and
                treatment T) balanced for level of milk production after weaning and number of lactation
                period. Ewes were fed a pelleted concentrate feed together with Lucerne Hay and wheat straw
                (1.5, 1.5 and 0.3 kg/animal/day, respectively). Group C received a conventional concentrate
                feed with soybean. Group T received a concentrate feed of equal energy and protein content (1
                UFL/kg dry matter and 158.5 g/kg dry matter, respectively) in which soybean had been
                replaced with 500 grams of the aforementioned mixture of legumes. Chemical composition
                and antinutritional compounds of legumes were assessed. Data collection was performed every
                15 days for a 60-day period (a total of five measurements). Feed refusals from each group were
                weighted to calculate total and average individual feed intake. The BCS of each ewe was
                assessed by palpation of the dorsal lumbar region. Milk yield of individual ewes was recorded
                electronically; energy corrected milk yield was calculated. Individual milk samples were also
                collected to assess chemical composition (fat, protein, lactose, solids-non-fat; SNF). Data
                analysis was performed with mixed linear models in R. Throughout the study, concentrate feed
                intake was lower in Group T compared to C. There were no significant effects (P>0.10) of
                nutritional management on milk production and BCS. An exception was reported at the last
                measurement where ewes in Group T had significantly (P<0.10) higher milk yield, energy
                corrected milk yield, fat, protein, lactose and SNF yields, and BCS compared to ewes in Group
                C (increase by 30.0%, 27.9%, 28.1%, 47.8%, 43.0%, 32.2% and 4.5%, respectively). Overall,
                results suggest that replacing soybean with a mixture of the studied legumes is not expected to
                adversely affect the performance of intensively reared dairy ewes. This research has been co-
                financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek
                national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and
                Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE (project code: T1EDK-
                04448).

                Keywords 1
                Dairy ewes, legumes, soybean, milk production, body condition score


Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: svouraki@vet.auth.gr (A. 1); vipapani@vet.auth.gr (A. 2); eabraham@for.auth.gr (A. 3); pz@for.auth.gr (A. 4);
arsenosg@vet.auth.gr (A. 5)
ORCID: 0000-0003-4339-2051 (A. 1); 0000-0002-0481-6651 (A. 2); 0000-0003-4032-5830 (A. 3); 0000-0003-0776-3898 (A. 4); 0000-0003-
3224-5128 (A. 5)
             ©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
             Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
             CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)




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