ABSTRACT

A 35-day digestibility feeding trial was conducted with four West African Dwarf (WAD) bucks averaging 12kg in weight and aged between 9-12 months, to determine the intake and digestibility of pigeon pea-cassava peel based diets. Four experimental diets were formulated and designated A, B, C and D. The control diet A has zero percent pigeon pea inclusion and is compounded from cassava peel, brewers dried grain (BDG), palm kernel cake (PKC) bone meal (BM) and common salt. The test diets, B, C, and D also contains the above in addition to 10,20 and 30% pigeon pea inclusion levels respectively. All diets were roughly iso-nitrogenous, while the gross energy (kcal/g) contents were 3.44; 3.32; 3.21; 3.09 from diets A, B, C and D respectively. The diets were assigned to the animals in a 4 X 4 Latin square design. Each animal received each diet for 7 days and during the last 3 days, total urine and faeces collected. Weekly body weights and daily feed intake were recorded. Dry matter intake, nutrient digestibility and nitrogen balance were also computed. The result showed that pigeon pea-cassava peel diets generally improved intake in WAD goats. The dry matter (DM) (63.70; 64.93; 68.08; 71.20), crude protein (OF) (51.27; 57.85; 61.95; 66.25) and crude fibre (OF) (56.65; 58.13; 64.65; 64.47), digestibility values for diets A, B, C and D respectively differed (P<0.05),from each other same was also true for the energy values. The dry matter intake (DM1) (g/day) values were 547.19 for diet A, 588.44 for diet B, 618.13 for diet C and 624.38 for diet D. These values were not significantly different from each other (P>0.05). Except for urinary nitrogen, nitrogen intake and faecal nitrogen values also did not differ (P>O.05) and so were the apparent-N-digestibility values obtained in this study. The test diets generally promoted positive nitrogen balance among experimental animals. The diet with 30% pigeon pea inclusion (D) however promoted the best average performance in terms of nitrogen intake and nitrogen balance.