This study examined the effect of palm, soybean or fish oils on the performance, muscle fatty acid composition
and meat quality of goat kids. Twenty-four male Mahabadi kids (BW=19.4±1.2 kg) were divided into
three groups according to liveweight and randomly allocated to one of three diets. Animals were fed ad
libitum for 84 days. Different dietary fat sources had no effect on performance and/or carcass quality attributes.
The soybean oil diet decreased 16:0 and 18:0 concentrations and increased 18:2 and 18:3 and the
ratio of PUFA/SFA in the muscle compared with other treatments. Fish oil feeding increased 20:5 n-3 and
22:6 n-3 concentrations and decreased the ratio of n-6/n-3 in the muscle. The results demonstrate that the
use of fish oil is a nutritional strategy to improve the health claimable long-chain omega-3 fatty acid content
and n-6/n-3 ratio in goat meat without changing the sensory properties or colour of meat.