Nutritive assessment and in vitro fermentation of shea nut cake at graded levels in the diets of West African dwarf goats

Abstract

The perennial problem of feed shortage during the lean period necessitated the need to screen more feedstuffs that are less competitive. Shea nut cake (SNC) is one of the agro industrial by products that abound during dry season. Hence, this study was carried out to estimate the in vitro gas production pattern of shea nut cake in the mixed rations (T1= (0%), T2 = (10%), T3 = (15%), T4 = (25%), T5 = (50%), T6 = (75%) with cassava peels, corn bran, cowpea husk and wheat offal to balanced up to 100 % in equal proportion to predict the degradability of SNC basal diets. The proximate composition revealed that crude protein (CP) varied from 9.18% (T4) to 11.73% (T6). Ether extract (EE), Ash and crude fibre ranged from 2.03-13.62, 16.84-19.54 and 7.08-12.11 % respectively. The samples were incubated for 24 hours. Gas volume was significantly different among the treatments (P < 0.05). The values ranged between 7 and 28ml /200 mg DM in diets 1 and 3 respectively. The methane production ranged from (4.0-17.0ml/200mg DM) in T6 and T1, respectively.  Gas production from the soluble fraction (a) was highest in diet T1 and lowest in diet T6. The potential gas production (a+b) varied significantly from 7.00-28.00ml. The gas production rate (c) was highest for diet T1. ME (3.24-46.59MJ/kg DM), OMD (30.73-51.79%) and SCFA (0.22-0.75µmol) differed significantly (P < 0.05) across diets. Diet T3 had highest ME, OMD and SCFA contents. Diet (T3) gave moderate volume of methane. The results revealed that SNC at 15% inclusion can be effectively utilized by ruminants with minimum production of methane gas.