Open AccessGrowth performance and blood profile of West African dwarf goats fed urea treatedwild cocoyam (Colocasia esculentum) mea
Author(s) -
O. Y. Adedeji,
S. O. Odukoya,
O. M. Odetola,
O. A. Awodele,
A. A. Saka
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nigerian journal of animal production
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 0331-2062
DOI - 10.51791/njap.v45i1.319
Subject(s) - urea , zoology , biology , dry matter , meal , colocasia esculenta , completely randomized design , feed conversion ratio , body weight , food science , botany , biochemistry , endocrinology
Wild cocoyam is a non edible plant found growing around riversides and can serve as source of energy to ruminants. Hence, a twelve weeks study was conducted to investigate the effect of wild cocoyam – urea meal on the growth performance and blood profile of West African dwarf (WAD) goats. Twelve WAD goats with an average weight of 7.25 ± 0.04kg were randomly allotted into four dietary treatments: T1 (raw wild cocoyam), T2 (urea treated wild cocoyam), T3 (urea treated cooked wild cocoyam) and T4 (urea treated fermented wild cocoyam), replicated thrice in a completely randomized design. Results obtained showed that the experimental diets significantly (p 0.05) differences among the dietary treatments were observed in all the serum biochemical indices evaluated except for urea which ranged from 15.50 – 28.70mg/dl. It can therefore be concluded that addition of urea with processing, further improved the utilization of the experimental diets thus improving performance of the animals.