ABSTRACT

A 35-day feeding trial was conducted with four West African Dwarf (WAD) bucks averaging 12kg and aged between 15-24 months to determine the intake and digestibility of sweet potato peel/yeast slurry diets. The control diet (A) contained 100% sweet potato peel. Diets B,C, and D consisted 80:20;75:25 and 67:33 percent weight dried sweet potato peels-brewers yeast slurry respectively. The diets were assigned to the animal in a 4x4 latin square design. Each animal received each test diet for 7 days and during the last 3 days, urine and faeces were collected. The diets (A-D) contained  3.58; 3.50 and 3.35 crude protein (%) and gross energy (kcal/g) respectively. Weekly body weights and daily feed intake were recorded. Dry matter intake, nutrient digestibilities and nitrogen balance were also computed. The result showed that incorporating dried sweet potato peels with brewers yeast slurry in the diets of the goats improved feed intake. The dry matter (53.87; 57.03; 60.51 and 63.32) crude protein (43.66; 49.49; 53.34 and 57.69) and crude fibre (33.17; 36.74; 38.92 and 51.27) digestibility values for diet A-D respectively did not differ (p>O.OS). The dry matter intake for diets A-D (270g; 275g; 285g; and 290g) were similar and did not differ (p>O.05) significantly. Average nitrogen intake (g/day), faecal and urinary output (g/day) did not differ (p>O.05) among the treatment diets. Diet D retained more nitrogen than other diets. The values for absorbed-N(g/day/wkg°75) were 0.24; 0.34; 0.39 and 0.45 respectively for diets A, B,C, and D respectively. Apparent N-digestibility values were 56.45; 63.41; 63.97; and 66.25 percent for the respective dietary treatments. These values did not differ (p>O.05) significantly. The test diets promoted positive nitrogen balance among the experimental animals. Diet D however performed better than the other diets.

Table of Contents

Title page i

Certification ii

Abstract iii

Dedication v

Acknowledgements vi

Table of Contents ix

List of Tables xi

List of figure xii

Chapter One

1.0 Introduction 1

1.1 Justification 4

1.2 Objectives 5

Chapter Two

2.0 Literature review 6

2.1 Goat as a Ruminant 6

2.2 v Nutrition of Goats 7

2.2.1 Dry Matter 9

2.2.2 Energy Requirement 9

2.2.3 Protein Requirement 10

2.2.4 Mineral and Vitamin Requirement 11

2.2.5 Water Requirement 12

2.3 Feeding Behaviour of Goats 13

2.4 Economic importance of Goats 14

2.5 Sweet Potato as a staple food in Nigeria 16

2.5.1 Quantity Cultivated/Average yearly Production 16

2.5.2 The States in Nigeria Mostly Cultivated 17

2.5.3 Energy and Protein Contents of Sweet Potato peels 18

2.5.4 Antinutritional Factors and the Nutritive Value 20

2.5.5 Sweet Potato peels as feed supplements for West African Dwarf (WAD)

goats 22

2.6 Brewers Yeast Slurry (Yeast Single Cell Protein) as a by-product of

beer production 23

2.6.1 The Nutritional status of Yeast Slurry 24

2.6.2 The Economics of Yeast Slurry utilization for Animal feed 26

2.6.3 Voluntary Feed Intake in feed Animals 27

2.6.4 Factors Affecting voluntary feed intake in farm Animals 29

2.6.4.1 Sensory Appraisal 29

2.6.4.2 Size of Reticulo — rurnen 30

2.6.4.3 Digestibility and Rate of Disappearance of feed from the gut 30

2.6.4.4 Concentrate supplement 31

2.6.4.5 Physiological state 31

2.7 Digestibility of Nutrients in farm Animals 32

2.7.1 Factors Affecting Digestibility of Nutrients in farm Animals 32

2.7.1.1 Level and Nature of Crude Protein and Carbohydrate 32

2.7.1.2 The level and nature of Crude fibre and Lignin 33

2.7.1.3 Animal factors 34

2.7.1.4 Level of feeding 35

2.8 Voluntary Intake as Influenced by Digestibility in Ruminants 35

Chapter Three

3.0 Materials and Methods 37

3.1 Experimental site 37

3.2 Experimental Animals and their management 37

3.3 Experimental Diets 38

3.4 Digestibility Studies 39

3.5 Chemical Analysis 40

3.6 Statistical Analysis 41

Chapter Four

4.0 Results and Discussion 44

4.1 The Chemical Composition of the Diets 44

4.2 Apparent Digestibility Coefficient of Sweet potato peel based Yeast

Slurry Diets 46

4.3 Nitrogen Balance 50

Conclusion 55

References 56