Biological response, haematology and serum biochemical indices of weanling Wistar rats as affected by replacement of dietary vitamin-mineral premix with differently processed leaf meal composites

Abstract

This study was aimed at evaluating the effects of replacing vitamin-mineral premix (VMP) with the differently processed leaf meal composite (LMC) in the diets of male weanling Wistar rats. In a completely randomised design, weanling Wistar rats (n=48), weighing 40–50g live weight, were housed individually and allotted to six diets, each treatment was replicated eight times. The treatments were standard casein diets with supplemental VMP (CDw), without VMP (CDwo) andnitrogen free diet (NFD). Other diets had their dietary VMP replaced with air dried (AD), oven dried (OD) and freeze dried (FD) LMC at 0.2% in the respective diets. Rats were fed and given water adlibitum for 15 days. Results showed that net protein utilisation (NPU) of52.10 in rats on CDw and 58.91 in AD were similar (p>0.05) but significantly higher (p<0.05) than 39.76 in rats on CDwo, 39.29 in FD and 26.20 in OD. No significant differences (p>0.05) were observed in protein efficiency ratio (PER) of rats on CDw (0.85), OD (0.50), AD (0.73) and FD (0.56). Biological value of diets in rats fed CDw (89.94), CDwo (74.32), OD (86.32), AD (87.08) and FD (85.37) were similar (p>0.05). Sera lipid indices were of rats on standard casein control diets were similar (p>0.05) to those on test diets while the packed cell volume (PCV%) of rats on CDw (42.33), AD (42.67), OD (40.33) and FD (41.67) were also similar (p>0.05). Judging from NPU, AD LMC was most superior in replacing the dietary VMP. However, the LMC from the three drying methods had no adverse effects on the biological indices of the diets based on them in the fed rats thus successfully replaced dietary VMP of weanling Wistar rats.