Comparative Study on the Utilization of Groundnut Haulms and Cowpea Husks by Lactating Red Sokoto does Fed Digitaria smutsii Basal Diet.
ABSTRACT
The efficacy, acceptability and utilization of groundnut haulms (GH) and cowpea husks (CH) as feed resources for Red Sokoto does (RSD) were investigated.
The experiment, in a randomized complete block design involved growth and digestibility trials using twenty pregnant RSD in their last trimester and twelve Red Sokoto bucks (RSB) for the respective trials.
The RSD (average liveweight, 27.52± 1.74kg) were aged 2-3 years old while, the RSB (average liveweight, 19.84± 1.4kg) were aged 1½ year old.
The trials were used to determine voluntary feed intake, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance, milk yield, milk composition and weight gain.
There were four treatment groups and both trials lasted for 90 and 21 days respectively. Diet 1, the conventional concentrate diet, cotton seed cake (CSC) was used as control.
Diets 2 (GH), 3 (CH), and 4 (GH+CH) were the crop residue test diets. Each of the supplementation diet was fed at 1.8% of body weight (BWT).
Digitaria smutsii hay was fed at 2.7% BWT. There was no significant (P>0.05) difference in dry matter and crude protein intake while, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance were statistically (P>0.05) similar across treatments.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Livestock play a very important role in Nigerian agriculture contributing about 10144×103 metric tones to the world milk production (FAO, 1996).
The livestock population comprises about 14 million cattle, 34 million goats, 22 million sheep and about 100 million poultry (FAO, 1996).
The Red Sokoto , is the most important goat breed in Nigeria, accounting for about 70% of the estimated 34.5 million goats in Nigeria (Osuhor et al., 1998).
The livestock sub-sector is dominated by traditional systems of production, processing and marketing. Transhumance pastoralists in the north of the country rear a very high proportion of the cattle herd and many sheep and goats.
The two major problems facing small ruminant production are nutrition and health. Energy and protein supplies are the essential components in animal nutrition and, in many tropical countries (Nigeria inclusive), these components are often the critical limiting factors to ruminant production.
Feed resources for ruminants are mainly from native rangelands complemented by crop residues from farmlands after harvest. Crop residues are important ruminant feed in most parts of the sub-humid zone (Alhassan 1989).
About 50 million tones of crop residues are available annually from the seven major crops in Nigeria (Alhassan and Buvanendran 1985).
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