Performance and nutrients digestibility of piglets fed ditary detoxified balanites augyptiaca friuts

Abstract

A feeding trial was conducted to assess the effect of dietary detoxified Nigerian Balanites aegyptiaca fruits on performance and nutrients digestibility of weanling pigs. Twenty pigs weighing averagely 4.5 ± 0.85kg were used for the experiment which lasted for one month. The pigs were randomly allocated to the five dietary treatments in a completely randomized design. Five diets made of a corn-soy control diet and four others to which 20% of boiled, roasted, boiled and roasted, boiled and fermented respectively were used. Feed consumption and weight gain of pigs maintained on the Balanites based diets were comparable with the conventional diet (p > 0.05). However, efficiency of feed utilization on the Balanites containing diets was inferior to that on the control diet (p < 0.05). Nutrients digestibility measured by dry organic matter and crude fiber were not significantly influenced (p > 0.05) but protein and fat
digestibility were significantly influenced by dietary Balanites (p < 0.05). Gross energy intake and daily retained energy were significant on Balanites containing diets (p < 0.05) relative to the reference diet while the metabolizable energy was not affected ( p > 0.05). Nitrogen consumption using indices of protein intake, fecal nitrogen output, daily retained
nitrogen and nitrogen retention coefficient were not significantly different from values obtained on the control diet (p > 0.05). It was therefore concluded that Balanites aegyptiaca fruits, when detoxified by any of the traditional methods adopted, could be incorporated in diets for livestock even up to 70% inclusion level without deleterious effects on animal consuming the feed.