There is evidence that a large volume of saliva containing a significant quantity of urea is poured into the rumen, and also that blood urea is diffused into the rumen through the ruminal epithelium (Houpt, 1959; Weston & Hogan, 1967). Egan (1965) reported that, with sheep fed a low protein cereal hay, cellulose digestion in the rumen was increased by abomasal urea infusion. Furthermore, the utilization of recycled urea nitrogen has been investigated in sheep (McIntyre, 1971) and cattle (Vercoe, 1969) using the intraruminal and intravenous infusion techniques. The objective of the present experiment was to determine whether or not the abomasal administration of urea to adult goats fed a low quality hay would influence the nitrogen retention in the body.

There is little information available on the effect of growth rate on muscle distribution in sheep. Although Lohse, Moss & Butterfield (1971) and Lohse (1973) have reported data on muscle distribution of Merino sheep, the growth rates of animals in both these studies were neither controlled nor reported. In another experiment using Merino sheep, Lohse, Pryor & Butterfield (1973) studied the effect of a period of live-weight loss on the relationship of selected muscles to total side muscle during subsequent re-alimentation. They found that the interrupted growth path decreased the proportion of total side muscle formed by the weight of ten muscles which had previously been classified as muscles with a high growth impetus (Lohse, 1971). Data are presented herein for the muscle distribution of sheep grown along three growth paths.