Article Sidebar
Article Details
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.
Main Article Content
The effect of substituting cowpea husk with Daniellia oliveri foliage on the performance of red Sokoto goat
Abstract
An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of replacing cowpea husk with Daniellia oliveri foliage on the performance of Red Sokoto Goats. Twenty five (25) Red Sokoto goats weighing on the average 13.00 ±1.2kg were divided into five groups with five animals per group. Each group was randomly assigned to the five dietary treatments in a completely randomized design (CRD). The diets compared were 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 0% cowpea husk and 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% D. oliveri foliage designated as T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 respectively. Result indicates significant (P<0.05) differences in all the parameters studied for chemical composition of the experimental diets. T5 (100% D. oliveri inclusion) had the highest values for all the parameters for chemical composition except for ether extract acid detergent lignin. All the parameters for the chemical composition was observed to increase with increase in the level D. oliveri foliage. The nutrients digestibility investigated were significantly affected (P<0.05). Dry matter (DM) crude fibre (CFD) and neutral detergent fibre digestibilities (NDFD) was observed to decrease with increase in the level of D. oliveri foliage while crude protein (CPD) and ether extract digestibility increase with increase in the level of D. oliveri. Nitrogen intake and faecal nitrogen output (g/day) of goats in T5 and T3 (15.72 and 4.81 g/day) were significantly higher than the other treatment groups. Urinary nitrogen was significantly (P<0.05) influenced by all the dietary treatment groups, with goats on T4 (4.88 g day-1) being the highest output and T5 (3.32 g/day) the lowest. There was no significant effect (p>0.05) of feeding D. oliveri foliage on carcass components and organ weights except for carcass length, carcass weight, weight of skin, dressing percentage and weight of heart. From the results, it can be concluded that D. oliveri foliage can be fed as sole diet or in combination with cowpea husk in the semi-arid environment.
Keywords: Browse, Daniellia oliveri, goats, Digestibility and Carcass
