Nutrient Digestibility and Growth Performance of Red Sokoto Bucks fed Processed Piliostigma reticulatum Pods

Abstract

The nutrient digestibility and growth performance of Red Sokoto bucks fed diets containing different 
processed forms of Piliostigma reticulatum pods were assessed in an experiment. A completely 
randomized design was used to assign fifteen bucks at random to three different dietary treatments. 
Treatment one served as control as such, did not undergo processing, while in treatment two, the P. 
reticulatum pods were soaked in water for twenty-four hours and in treatment three, the pods were 
roasted under controlled time and temperature. The experiment lasted for 63 days. The findings 
showed that there were no significant (P>0.05) differences in digestibility. However, dry matter 
digestibility (DMD), neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFD) and crude fiber digestibility (CFD) 
were numerically highest in treatments 2 (92.72, 87.13 and 92.24%), and lowest in treatments 3 and 1 
(72.00, 85.69 and 89.53%) and (81.76, 75.56 and 81.67%) On the other hand, ash digestibility 
(ASHD), acid detergent fiber digestibility (ADFD) and crude protein digestibility (CPD) were higher in 
treatment 3 (89.13, 85.92 and 81.62%). These values were lowest in treatments 1 and 2 (83.51 and 
82.81%), (76.03 and 83.70%) and (77.70 and 78.41) respectively. The dietary treatments had an impact 
on growth performance where live weight gain; treatment 1 had the lowest average daily weight gain 
(13.17 g/day) and treatment 3 had the highest (23.25 g/day). The animals that were fed diet 3 (7.19) and 
diet 2 (14.12) made better utilization of their feed than the others. Treatment 2 where animals were fed 
with water-soaked Piliostigma reticulatum pods was suggested for raising Red Sokoto bucks due to the 
higher dry matter digestibility (92.72%), neutral detergent fiber digestibility (87.13%), crude fiber 
digestibility (92.24%), total weight gain (0.82kg) and superior feed conversion ratio (16.73) compared 
to other treatments