Effect of substitution of soybean meal by detoxified karanja cake on diet digestibility, growth, carcass and meat traits of sheep

• Detoxified karanja cake can be added at 9 per cent of concentrate mixture.
• At higher levels adverse effects are seen on body weights, dry matter intake, hot carcass weights.
• The effects are caused due to residual ANF's present in the cake which has affected the studied parameters.

The non-conventional karanja cake is rich in protein (around 30% CP) and can be used in livestock feed as a protein source instead of conventional protein supplement cake like soybean meal (SBM), groundnut cake, etc. The present study was carried out to research the effect of partially substituted soybean meal with detoxified karanja cake (dKC) on performance of ram lambs. Twenty-four ram lambs were randomly divided into four groups (n = 6) and fed different levels (%) of detoxified karanja cake (0% replacement, control; 25% replacement, dKC-25; 50% replacement, dKC-50 and 75% replacement, dKC-75) in concentrate mixtures for 140 days. dKC was incorporated in the concentrate mixtures at the expense of soybean meal, maize grain and wheat bran at 9, 18 and 29% in dKC-25, dKC-50 and dKC-75, respectively on fresh basis. As the level of karanja in the diet increased, DMI was found to be decreasing significantly. Similar to these effects, N-retention was reduced leading to significant reduction of body weight in high karanja cake replaced groups. Similar trend was observed in OM, CP, and ADF digestilities and reason attributed to increased dietary level of karanja cake. However, detrimental effects were not observed on the levels of total protein, albumin, globulin, serum urea, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) indicating residual ANF present in dKC did not exert any adverse effects. The effects on hot carcass weight, weights of liver and testes are following a decreasing trend while that weight of kidney is increasing with level of karanja in the diet. Our findings highlights that the detoxified karanja cake can be added as replacement of soybean meal (SBM) at low levels. However, higher levels of replacement (above 9 per cent of concentrate mixture) warrant caution due to its adverse effect on studied parameters.