Water Consumption of Yankasa Rams Fed a Basal Diet of Maize Stover-lablab Mixture

Abstract

Sixteen Yankasa rams aged 18-24 months, weighing 25.4-31.0 kg were randomly divided into 4 treatment groups labelled A, B, C and D, each treatment comprising of 4 rams. Maize stover-lablab hay mixture in a 2:1 maize stover; lablab ratio was offered at 2, 4, 6 and 8% as body weight to treatments A, B, C and D respectively, in addition to 300g of concentrate per head per day in an individual feeding trial. Water was offered at 4kg per ram daily. Water refusal and left-over feed were recorded separately daily, before feeding in the morning. Samples of feed and faeces were analyzed separately for proximate constituents. Live weight changes were measured and used to adjust the levels of the basal diet throughout the 90 days duration of the trial. Results showed that the rams offered the higher level of the feed consumed more water than the rams on the other treatments. However, there was no significant difference (P>0.05) in water consumption between treatments D and C, and between treatments B and A. But treatment D was significantly different (P<0.05) from treatments B and A. Daily water consumption was 2.65, 2.63, 1.87 and 1.75 kg per ram for treatments D, C, B and A respectively. Yankasa rams offered high levels of maize stover-lablab hay mixture required about 3 litres of water per head day for optimum utilization of the feed.