Hydroponic and organoponic green forage of corn as a nutritional supplement for sheep in the Amazon Foothills

Contextualization: Ruminants have a comparative advantage over other species, because their ability to digest the fiber fractions present in forages.

Knowledge gap: In tropical regions, due to changing environmental conditions, it is more difficult to produce pastures of high nutritional quality, resulting in forage seasonality that leads to supplementation with commercial feedstuffs that increase production costs.

Purpose: Evaluate the effect of supplementation with hydroponic green fodder (HGF) and organoponic green fodder (OGF) of corn on the productive performance of sheeps during the rearing phase, in the Amazonian piedmont of the Department of Putumayo.

Methodology: Twelve whole Dorper lambs, aged 90 days and weighing 14.62 kg, were used. They were distributed to three treatments consisting of: T0: base diet (BD), T1: hydroponic green fodder (HGF), T2: organoponic green fodder (OGF). Total weight gain (TWG), daily weight gain (DWG), total feed intake (TFI), feed conversion (FC) and feed efficiency (FE) were evaluated during a supplementation period of 45 days. A completely randomized design was used. Data was analyzed by analysis of variance and means were separated by Tukey's test with a significance level of (p<0.05).

Results and conclusions: Differences (p < 0.05) were found in TWG 3.66 kg (T1), 3.61 kg (T2) and 2.35 kg (T0); similarly, to DWG 81.39 g (T1), 80.30 g (T2) and 52.22 g (T0); TFI 1.33 kg (T1), 1. 27 kg (T2) and 1.05 kg (T0); the FC was estimated for T1 at 3.23, 3.27 in T2 and 5.13 in T0; and the FE was 0.063 (T1), 0.061 (T2) and 0.050 (T0), evidencing the influence of the type of diet used. The implementation of HGF and OGF becomes a viable alternative for food supplementation in sheeps production systems, where environmental conditions make it difficult to cultivate forage for grazing. It was concluded that the inclusion of 30 % of corn HGF in the diet of growing sheep improves their productive performance.