FIBRE INTAKE BY YANKASA RAMS FED COWPEA HAY AND GROUNDNUT HAULMS AS SUPPLEMENTS TO BASAL RICE STRAW

Abstract

Nutrients deficiencies associated with poor digestibility negatively affects growth performance of ruminants. The study was conducted to assess the influence of cowpea hay and groundnut haulms supplementation on fibre intake in growing Yankasa rams. Sixteen (16) Yankasa rams weighing averagely 20.19 ± 2.2 kg were randomly assigned to four treatments viz, rice straw (Treatment I), groundnut haulms (Treatment II), cowpea hay (Treatment III) and combination of cowpea and groundnut haulms supplementations (Treatment IV) in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four (4) replications. The animals were fed experimental diets, concentrate at 1.5% body weight and supplements while rice straw was fed as basal diet ad libitum to all the experimental animals, the experiment lasted for 84 days. The results for fibre intakes revealed significant (P<0.05) differences in all the parameters evaluated except concentrate lignin. intakes values of the treatment groups were significantly (P<0.05) higher than the controls. Significant (P<0.05) differences were observed for treatments groups in cellulose and hemicellulose compared to control. Similarly, significant difference (P≤0.05) was found in growth performance among the treatments in terms of final body weight, weight gain, feed conversion ratio, supplement and roughage intakes. With the exception of roughage intake, the cowpea haulms supplemented group was found to have the highest values of 8.88kg. 8.63kg, 6.36 and 388.43 g/day, respectively. The findings from this study implied that, supplementation of cowpea and groundnut haulms to basal rice straw enhanced fibre intake with subsequent improvement of growing Yankasa ram