Effects of supplementation of different level concentrated feed on nutrient digestibility and performance of sika deer.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of supplementation of different level concentrated feed on nutrient digestibility and performance of sika deer(Cervus nippon).9 deer were divided into 3 groups randomly with 3 deer per group.Deer were fed one of the three experimental diets with concentrated feed of 906 g,996.6 g and 815.4 g respectively.Roughage was provided enough to the animals throughout the experiment.The results indicated as follow: feed intake of dry matter(DM),organic matter(OM),crude protein(CP) and ether extract(EE) were increased significantly(P0.05) while digestible DM,digestible OM,digestible CP and digestible EE were also increased significantly(P0.05) in animals fed high level concentrated feed.Feed intake of roughage was increased significantly(P0.05) while corresponding digestible crude fiber was also increased significantly(P0.05).In the scope of experiment design,no significant difference was observed in gross energy and digestible energy (P0.05).Energy digestibility in deer fed high level concentrated feed was higher than those in deer fed low level concentrated feed(P0.05).No significant difference was found in body weight gain of animals fed high and low level concentrated feed(P0.05).It concluded that there were no effects on growth performance of sika deer if concentrated feed were reduced at 10 %,it could reduce production cost.