Performance of Sokoto red goats (bucks) fed urea treated and untreated rice milling waste in north western Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out at the Livestock Teaching and Research Farm of Federal University Dutsin-Ma to monitor the performance of Sokoto red bucks fed urea treated and untreated rice milling waste. Twenty entire male Sokoto red bucks were used. The experimental animals were allotted (n=5) in a completely randomized design (CRD) to diets A and B with 15% and 30% inclusion levels of untreated rice milling waste, respectively, while C and D contained 15% and 30% inclusion levels of urea treated rice milling waste, respectively, in a completely randomized design (CRD). The feeding trial lasted for 84 days while the digestibility trial lasted for 14 days. Three randomly selected experimental bucks from each experimental treatment were housed in the metabolic cages and their faeces collected for seven days using faecal bag after the seven days adaptation period. The faeces were weighed and bulked 10% collected and oven-dried before they were stored in polythene bags until required for analysis. Urine was also collected for seven days inside the metabolic cages using urinary funnel piped into the bottle containing 2 ml 10% sulphuric acid to trap the nitrogen content. 10% of the urine was sampled and stored in freezer at -2C for chemical analysis. The dry matter intake was significantly higher (P<0.05) in treatments A and B than other treatments. However, this did not result in significantly better (P<0.05) performance (feed efficiency and Cost of feed/ live weight gain) as shown with treatment C and D that had significantly better (P<0.05) weight gain, feed efficiency, nutrients digestibility and nitrogen retention. The cost of feed per kg live weight was shown to be significantly lower (P<0.05) in treatments C and D compared to treatment B which was significantly lower (P<0.05) than treatment A. The study concluded that diet D which contained 30% inclusion level of urea treated rice milling waste was the best among all the diets because of the lowest cost per feed live weight of 1.40 USD/kg and feed efficiency of 0.10.