Review: The Effect of Protected Lemuru Fish Oil in Total Mixed Ration of Thin-Tailed Sheep

Sheep is one of the small ruminant producing red meat in Indonesia. Sheep meat contains higher saturated fatty acid compared to non-ruminant meat products. Meat consumption with high saturated fatty acid should be limited due to a higher risk of atherosclerosis (blood vein constriction) causing coronary heart disease. Strategy to reduce saturated fatty acid in the sheep meat should be conducted by increasing unsaturated fatty acid content in sheep meat. Accelerating unsaturated fatty acids can be done by feed supplementation containing unsaturated fatty acid. It can be done by protecting unsaturated fatty acids to avoid bio-hydrogenation process in the rumen. Lemuru fish oil can be utilized as an unsaturated fatty acid source. Supplementation of protected lemuru fish oil in total mixed ration (TMR) is considered to improve treatment effectivity, due to sheep is unable to choose certain feedstuffs and instead of ingesting the whole diets so that the consumed diet had balance nutrient. Supplementation of protected fat is suggested to not modify rumen fermentation, improving sheep performance, and increasing unsaturated fatty acid content of sheep meat. This review provides previous research studies with protected fat supplementation in sheep diet. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.