HEALTH AND PERFORMANCE OF ARABIAN RACING CAMELS FED ON ADVANCED FIBER NUTRITION (FIBERPOWER®)

Abstract

Most of camel nutrition programs are based on ruminant formulations due to lack of scientific data. Camel trainers use their traditional ways in racing camel feeding depend mainly on Barley and green Alfalfa beside to other food stuff like dates, honey, molasses and cow`s milk. This experiment was conducted in a camel barn in Ajman, United Arab Emirates. The effect of feeding controlled bio-fermented forage fiber-based feeds called FiberPower® on 5 Arabian racing camels under Arabian Peninsula climate. Blood sample collected before feeding FiberPower®, and 3 blood samples collected after applying our feeding formula. Changes in both hematological and biochemical parameters had been conducted for the 5 camels in our experiment. Hematological and biochemical parameters had been tested. Comparison between results before and after FiberPower® feeding showed improvement of the optimum values of White Blood Cells (WBCs), Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN), Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH), Creatine Kinase (CK), and Aspartate Transaminase (AST) which reflected on good health and performance of Arabian racing camels. For example, BUN decreased significantly from 20.2 (±4.1) mg /dl to 13.8 (±1.8) mg /dl after only 9 days of feeding on FiberPower® and nearly the same value of optimum level which is 13 mg /dl. However the other hematological and biochemical parameters did not show any significant difference.