In order to manipulate ruminal microbial ecosystem to reduce methane emission and ammonia nitrogen concentration, ruminant nutritionists have suggested optimizing diet formulation and using feed additives (Calsamiglia et al., 2006). Supplementation diets with antibiotics growth promoters such as monensin and lasalocid diminish losses of energy and nitrogen. Recently, some studies have done to evaluate the potential of garlic oil as alternative to these antibiotics because of the risk of appearance of antibiotic residues in milk and meat and development of multi-drug bacteria (Busquet et al., 2005; Calsamiglia et al., 2007). However most of these researches have accomplished under in vitro condition and there is limited information about the effects of garlic oil on rumianl fermentation using in vivo experiments. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of diets containing garlic oil (GA), turmeric powder (TU) or monensin (MO) on ruminal pH and ammonia nitrogen concentration (NH3-N) in sheep.

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