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


O.Y. Adedeji
S.O. Odukoya
O.M. Odetola
O.A. Awodele
A.A. Saka

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.


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eISSN: 0331-2062