High-concentrate diet supplemented with hydrolysable tannin improves the slaughter performance, intestinal antioxidant ability and barrier function of fattening lambs

The objective of current experiment was to study the potential influence of hydrolysable tannin supplementation on slaughter performance, meat quality, intestinal digestive enzyme activity, antioxidant ability and barrier function in fattening lambs. In total, 36 male Hu sheep lambs with similar body weight (15.83 ± 0.48 kg) and days in age (55 ± 2 d) were randomly assigned to one of three groups of 12 animals each: control without tannin (CON) and tannin supplementation groups (TA1, 3 g/d per lamb; TA2, 6 g/d per lamb). All the lambs were reared in individual hutches, and the experiment lasted for 60 d. On d 61, 8 lambs from each group were randomly selected to slaughter. Results showed that the serum diamine oxidase and lipopolysaccharide contents of TA2 group were higher (p