Blood metabolites of intensively reared gravid west African dwarf goats fed pulverized biofibre wastes based diets

Abstract

Under intensive management, the haematological and some biochemical parameters were studied using twelve (12) West African dwarf (WAD) goats weighing 11.90 – 13.05 kg. Does were fed three dietary treatments; pulverized maize-cob/cassava peel (PMC/CsP), pulverized maize-cob/brewers’ grain (PMC/BG) and pulverized maizecob/ cassava peel/brewers’ grain (PMC/CsP/BG) such that four individually housed animals, each serving as a replicate. Animals were synchronized using prostaglandin (PGF2α) at 1 ml/10 kg intramuscularly to bring all the animals to oestrus and were then exposed to a proven buck for mating after 24 hour of administration. Prior to synchronization of the animals, three animals from each treatment were randomly selected and blood collected via the jugular vein into different sterilized specimen bottles with or without anti-coagulant (EDTA) for haematological and serum biochemical evaluations respectively. This was repeated at 20 weeks of gestation. The completely randomized design was adopted. Results showed that at the non-gravid and gravid stages, goats on PMC/BG had significantly higher (p<0.05) packed cell volume (PCV), haemoglobin (Hb), mean cell volume (MCV) and mean cell haemoglobin (MCH), while goats on PMC/CsP/BG had significantly increased (p<0.05) white blood cell (WBC). Total proteins, urea, creatinine and alanine amino transferase (ALT) did not show significant difference (p>0.05) in the non-gravid and gravid goats, while aspartate amino transferase (AST) was significantly higher (p<0.05) in the non-gravid goats fed PMC/BG (90.01 iu/l). It can therefore be concluded that diets used in this study did not show adverse implications on the health of the animals hence its suitability as alternative feed source for gravid goats.

Keywords: Pregnant goats, Dietary treatments, Pulverized maize-cob, Cassava peel, Brewers’ grain, Intensive management, Haematology, Serum biochemistry