The Effects of Supplementing Legume Crop Residue with <i>Faidherbia albida<,/i> Pods for Goat Feeding in the North East Nigeria

Abstract

The effect of Faidherbia albida pods inclusion (groundnut hay and maize offal) on dry matter intake, digestion and live weight change was studied using 12 male West African dwarf goats aged between 15 to 18 months and weighing 29 ± 1kg. The goats were randomly allotted to three treatments with four goats per treatment. The treatments compared were control (To) diet without Faidherbia albida pod, treatment (T1) with 10% Faidherbia albida pods and treatment (T2) which contained 20% Faidherbia albida pods. Dry matter intake, water intake, dry-water digestibility and live weight changes were measured. The dry matter intakes of 1.15, 1.10 and 1.14kg/head/day were recorded for the control, treatment T1 and treatment T2 respectively. The weight gain values of 0.179, 0.180, and 0.97kg/head/day were obtained for treatments To, T1 and T2 respectively. There was significant (P<0.5) difference between the control and the treatments. The dry matter digestibility values were 56.4, 56.42 and 58.3% for the control To, treatment T1 and treatment T2 while the water intake values were 3.89, 3.88 and 3.78 per day for the control To, treatment T1 and treatment T2 respectively. The daily liveweight changes recorded no significant (P<0.5) differences. This study showed that inclusion of Faidherbia albida pods at 20% depressed dry matter intake. Dry matter digestibility and liveweight change were not affected by the levels of Faidherbia albida pods inclusion in the diets of the goats.

JARD Vol. 2 2003: pp. 25-31