Growth performance and blood profile of West African dwarf goats fed urea treated wild cocoyam (Colocasia esculentum) meal

Abstract

Wild cocoyam is a non edible plant found growing around riversides and can serve as source of energy to ruminants. Hence, a twelve weeks study was conducted to investigate the effect of wild cocoyam – urea meal on the growth performance and blood profile of West African dwarf (WAD) goats. Twelve WAD goats with an average weight of 7.25 ± 0.04kg were randomly allotted into four dietary treatments: T₁ (raw wild cocoyam), T₂ (urea treated wild cocoyam), T₃ (urea treated cooked wild cocoyam) and T₄ (urea treated fermented wild cocoyam), replicated thrice in a completely randomized design. Results obtained showed that the experimental diets significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the growth performance. Goats fed urea treated cooked wild cocoyam had the best feed conversion ratio (10.35), the highest values of dry matter intake (405.35 g/day) and daily weight gain (39.17 g/day) when compared to other dietary treatments. The dietary treatments did not significantly (p < 0.05) influence the haematological parameters except the red blood cells (9.62 - 11.67×10⁶ mm³), white blood cells (4.07-9.05×10⁶ mm³) and monocytes (1.00-2.50%). No significant (p >0.05) differences among the dietary treatments were observed in all the serum biochemical indices evaluated except for urea which ranged from 15.50 – 28.70mg/dl. It can therefore be concluded that addition of urea with processing, further improved the utilization of the experimental diets thus improving performance of the animals.