ABSTRACT

 An experiment was conducted using 16 weaner West African Dwarf (WAD) goats fed diets containing 15% raw, soaked, toasted and boiled pigeon pea seed meal. The study was carried out to evaluate the effect of processing methods of pigeon pea on the performance, digestibility and carcass quality of WAD goats. The experiment which lasted for 60 days was laid out in a completely randomized design using diets as treatments. The four diets had same percentage inclusion of every other ingredient; the pigeon pea seed however differed only in form. Results showed that final weight, total weight gain, daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio differed significantly (P<0.05) among treatment groups. Goats fed boiled pigeon pea based diet (PBD) had significantly (P><0.05) heavier final weight (10.87kg) than those fed toasted (8.25kg), soaked (7.56kg) and raw (7.25kg). Total weight gain (kg) followed similar pattern as the final weight with the following values obtained for boiled (4.62kg), toasted (2.13kg), soaked (1.56kg) and raw (1.19kg) pigeon pea seed based diets. Boiled PBD had the least feed conversion ratio relative to other diets; even though it gave (boiled PBD) higher numerical values in total and daily feed consumption (24.97kg; 416.16kg), there was no significant difference (P>0.05) among the treatment groups. Moreover, boiled PBD promoted efficient utilization of nitrogen relative to other diets in terms of nitrogen intake, nitrogen balance, nitrogen absorbed and apparent — N — digestibility. Percent dry matter (DM) intake did not differ significantly (P>0.05) for treatment diets; the values were 4.68, 4.02, 3.53 and 3.28% for raw, soaked, toasted and boiled PBDs, respectively. These values generally indicate that the goats consuming various diets were on positive dry matter status. The best dressing out percent of 58.07% was obtained for the boiled PBD and it differed significantly (P<0.05) from values obtained for goats fed raw (33.05%), soaked (36.96%) and toasted (38.72%) PBD. The least cost per kilogram weight gain was obtained for goats fed boiled PBD (N300), while the highest (N996.15) was from goats fed raw PBD. Also carcass, organ and offal> evaluation revealed that warm carcass, dressed percentage, loin, set, lungs, kidney and bone to lean ratio were significantly affected by the dietary treatments, and boiled PBD gave highest values for all except in kidney, liver and bone to lean ratio. The results above suggest that pigeon pea can be used generally to improve performance in WAD goats. However, boiled pigeon pea relative to raw, toasted and soaked appeared to be the best acceptable form of the pigeon pea to WAD goats especially when incorporated at 15% level in their ration.