Assessing Protein Sources on Growth Performance, Nutrient Intake, Digestibility and Nitrogen Balance of Growing Goats in Maiduguri, Borno State Nigeria

A study was conducted to evaluate growth performance, digestible nutrient intake and nitrogen balance in sixteen growing bucks fed different protein sources in total mixed ration for 56 days. The different protein sources were cotton seed cake, poultry litter, rumen content, and soya bean waste for treatment 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Significant (P<0.05) variation was observed in the proximate composition of the diets with treatment 1 exhibiting the highest crude protein (17.99%) and metabolizable energy (2425.3 kcal/kg) while treatment 4 had the highest crude fibre (28.0%) and moisture content (22.3%). Growth performance parameters showed that bucks fed treatment 1 diet achieved the highest daily weight gain (9.52 g/day) and better feed conversion ratio. The result indicated differences (P<0.05) in nutrient intake across the treatments in all the parameters. Animals in treatment 1 had the highest values in dry matter, organic matter, crude protein and ether extract intake while the lowest in treatment 4. The results also revealed that bucks fed cotton seed cake protein source exhibited superior nutrient digestibility with its corresponding lowest value in treatment 4. A positive nitrogen balance was observed for all the animals across the treatment with significant (P<0.05) differences between the treatments ranging from 10.87g/day for bucks fed rumen content (T3) to 13.91g/day for those on cotton seed cake (T1). It was concluded from this study that diets containing cotton seed cake fed to bucks gave better result in terms of growth performance, nutrient intake, digestibility and nitrogen balance than other diets.