Nutrient Intake and Digestibility of West African Dwarf Bucks Fed Cassava Peel-Cassava Leaf Meal Based Diets in South Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Four West African Dwarf (WAD) bucks averaging 8.0 kg and aged 6-8 months were used to determine the intake and digestibility of cassava peel-cassava leaf meal based diets. The four diets (A, B, C and D) were formulated to contain cassava peel, palm kernel cake, brewers’ dried grain, bone meal, soya bean meal, common salt and 0, 10, 20 and 30% cassava leaf meal respectively. The diets were assigned individually to the four animals in metabolism cages in a 4x4 Latin square design experiment. Feed intake, Dry Matter Intake (DMI), nutrient digestibility and the nitrogen balance status of each animal were measured. The dry matter intake, faecal-N, absorbed-N and N-balance values increased in the goats as the N-intake increased. The apparent N-digestibility did not follow any definite pattern. The faecal-N values differed significantly (p<0.05). These values were 2.53, 3.95, 3.12 and 3.15 g/d for diets A,B,C and D respectively. The digestibility coefficients of DM, CP and EE did not differ significantly (p>0.05) while those of CF, NFE and energy differed significantly (p<0.05) among experimental animal. The Metabolic Faecal Nitrogen (MFN) (g/100 gDM), Endogenous Urinary Nitrogen (EUN) (g/day/Wkg^0.75) and Digestibility Crude Protein (DCP) (g/day/Wkg ^0.75) values for maintenance were 0.25, 0.1420, 0.89; 0.26, 0.0279, 1.79; 0.32, 0.0232, 1.09 and 0.30, 0.0301, 2.01 respectively for diets A, B, C and D. All the diets promNoted positive N-balance. The cassava leaf meal fed diets required 1.81 times as much DCP yielded 1.17 times as much MFN and 0.19 times as much EUN as the control animals for maintenance.