Vet World   Vol.17   September-2024  Article - 23 

Effects of dietary black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) meal on performance, blood metabolites, and digestibility in a rice straw-based diet of fattening Garut lambs

Background and Aim: During black cumin oil production, black cumin meal (BCM) is produced as a by-product. This study investigated the potential use of BCM to partly replace concentrate in a rice straw-based diet of fattening Garut lambs. 

Materials and Methods: Twenty-eight heads of male Garut lambs aged approximately10 months with an average initial body weight of 20.7 kg/head (coefficient of variation 12.9%) were used. A completely randomized design was used to compare four different levels (0% [control], 5% [BCM-5], 10% [BCM-10], and 15% [BCM-15]) of BCM in rice straw- and concentrate-based diets on the performance of Garut lambs during 35- and 70-day feeding trials using seven replicates (n = 7). Blood metabolites and nutrient digestibility were also measured after the performance study. 

Results: BCM was rich in crude protein (36.8%) and tannins (21.6%). The BCM-10 and BCM-15 treatments increased (p < 0.05) average daily gain and feed efficiency compared with the control treatment in the 35-day feeding trial. All BCM treatments had greater dry matter (DM) intake compared with the Control at 70 days (p < 0.05). Furthermore, BCM-10 and BCM-15 had greater (p < 0.05) total protein, DM, and organic matter (OM) digestibility. BCM-15 had the highest (p < 0.01) blood triglyceride while BCM-10 tended to have higher (p < 0.1) blood glucose concentrations among the other treatments. 

Conclusion: BCM supplementation can partly replace concentrate and improve the overall quality of rice straw and concentrate-based diets, resulting in improved performance of fattening Garut lambs due to increased DM and OM digestibility, as well as protein and energy absorption. Approximately 10% of the BCM supplementation is suggested as the optimum level. 

Keywords: black cumin meal, blood metabolites, digestibility, lamb, performance, and rice straw.

How to cite this article: Ramdani D, Juandita KN, Hernaman I, and Alhuur KRG (2024) Effects of dietary black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) meal on performance, blood metabolites, and digestibility in a rice straw-based diet of fattening Garut lambs, Veterinary World, 17(9): 2152-2158.

Received: 2024-04-28    Accepted: 2024-08-26    Published online: 92024-09-25

Corresponding author: Diky Ramdani    E-mail: diky.ramdani@unpad.ac.id

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2024.2152-2158

Copyright: Ramdani, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.