Evaluation of Brewers’ Dried Grain on the Performance of Bunaji Yearling Bulls Raised under Intensive System

Evaluation of Brewers’ Dried Grain on the Performance of Bunaji Yearling Bulls Raised under Intensive System.

ABSTRACT

Two (2) trials were conducted to determine the preference, short term intake, and performance of Bunaji yearling Bulls fed concentrate diets containing brewers‟ dried grain (BDG).

In the first experiment, the chemical composition of Brewers‟ dried grain procured from three breweries namely Nigerian Brewery in Kaduna State, Benue Brewery Limited in Benue State, and Nigerian Brewery, Ibadan, Oyo State were analyzed.

A Preference and short term intake trial was then conducted for seven (7) days using Six (6) Bunaji yearling bulls with an average weight of 150 kg.

The bulls were fed 6 kg of brewer‟s dried grain from each source for two (2) hours daily in a cafeteria system. In the Second experiment, a growth trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding graded levels of brewer‟s dried grain on growth performance, apparent nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance of Bunaji yearling bulls.

A total of twenty five (25) Bunaji yearling bulls weighing 179 kg averagely were assigned to five diets containing 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40% inclusion levels of brewers‟ dried grain respectively in a completely randomized design.

INTRODUCTION

Feed constitute about 70-80% of the variable cost of growing cattle (Olayiwole et al., 1981). Therefore, any feeding system that will reduce feed cost will ultimately result in reduction of total cost of production and increase profit margin.

Thus, the use of non- conventional feedstuffs and crop residues which have little opportunity cost in their use for other purposes on the farm can be substituted for the conventional and very expensive feedstuffs to reduce cost of production (Lamidi et al., 2007).

The high growth rate of human population resulting in inadequate land available for extensive production systems has led to increased utilization of crop residues and agro- industrial by-products as animal feedstuff.

Current research efforts in most developing countries are therefore aimed at identifying potential feed sources that could be cheap, available for compounding livestock ration and have little or no demand by human so as to reduce competition between man and livestock (Ulfina et al., 2013).

Some of these potential feed materials that have been investigated include by-products from industries and waste from cattle ranches, abattoir and poultry houses (Alawa and Umunna, 1993; Abdulmalik et al., 1994). Addressing the problem of shortage of animal protein in Nigeria calls for total exploitation of all the ways of increasing the quantity of animal protein to meet the satisfactory level of intake.

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