The objective of this work was to evaluate the nutrient intake and ingestive behavior of growing Santa Inês lambs fed different levels of metabolizable energy (ME). It was used 20 non-castrated lambs at 50 days of age and with 13.00 ± 0.56 kg of body weight. The animals were distributed into four experimental treatments with different levels of metabolizable energy (2.08, 2.28, 2.47 and 2.69 Mcal/kg of dry matter) in a randomized block design with five replications. It was used as roughage tifton hay added to concentrate diet. Levels of metabolizable energy (ME) linearly affected intakes of dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, ether extract, no-fiber carbohydrates, and total digestible nutrients, expressed in g/day. The NDF intake, expressed as % BW and kg/BW0.75, decreased linearly with the increase of levels of energy in the diet due to the reduction in NDF content in the total dietary dry matter. Feeding and total chewing time, expressed in hour/day, decreased linearly with the energy levels of the experimental diets. However, idle time increased linearly, whereas rumination was not influenced by energy levels of the diets. Number of ruminate boli, of ruminating chews, of ruminating chews per bolus and time of chewing per bolus were not influenced by levels of metabolizable energy in the diets. Increase in metabolizable energy levels of diets affects intake of nutrients and ingestive behavior of growing Santa Inês lambs.
idle; intake; roughage; concentrate ratio; rumination
