The Influence of Tapioca flour as a Binder in “Complete Feed Wafers” Composed on the Coarse Fibre Digestibility, Coarse Fat Digestibility, and Nitrogen Free Extract (NFE) digestibility.

Abstract The objective of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of tapioca flour as an adhesive for full feed wafers made from Tithonia diversifolia and fermented bagasse. Amylose, a component found in tapioca flour, plays a significant role in wafer production. Converting feed into wafers offers several advantages, including increased density, reduced storage requirements, lower transportation costs, enhanced control and monitoring of animal feed intake, and the assurance of consistent nutritional value. This The Study Utilized a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four treatment groups and four replications. The treatments consisted of the following formulations: T1 – Forage 50%, concentrate 45%, and tapioca flour 5%; T2 – forage 50%, concentrate 40%, and tapioca flour10%; T3 – Forage 50%, concentrate 35%, and tapioca flour 15%; T4 – forage 50%, concentrate 30%, and tapioca flour 20%. The parameters assessed included the coarse fiber, coarse fat, and nitrogen free extract (NFE) digestibility. The results indicated that the treatments had a significant impact (P<0.05) on the coarse fiber, coarse fat, NFE digestibility. The study concluded that the incorporation of tapioca flour influenced the digestibility of these nutritional components only required 10% tapioca flour as an adhésive. NFE digestibility is 61.07%, coarse fibre digestibility is 57.14%, and coarse fat digestibility is 56.70%.