UTILIZATION OF UNTREATED OR UREA TREATED SOYA BEANS HUSK WITH SUPPLEMENTS BY GROWING YANKASA RAMS

Abstract

A 10 weeks (70 days) experiment was carried out to evaluate nutrient intake, digestibility, and growth performance of Yankasa rams fed untreated or urea treated soybean husks with supplementation. In the study 16 Yankasa rams with an average weight of 17.20 kg were randomly allocated to four (4) dietary treatments with four (4) animals per treatment in Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The two (2) basal feeds were untreated soya beans husk (USBH) and urea treated soya bean husk (UTSBH). The supplements were maize bran with cotton seed cake (50:50) and maize bran with groundnut cake (50:50). Animals on treatments I and II were fed USBH while those on treatments III and IV fed urea treated soybean husks. Treatment I and III were supplemented with 300 g of maize bran with cotton seed cake (50:50), while those on treatments II and IV were also supplemented with 300g of maize bran with groundnut cake (50:50). Significant differences (P<0.05) were observed in total weight gain (TWG), average daily weight gain (ADWG), feed intake (FI) and dry matter Intake (DMI) with treatment IV having the highest values (4.88 kg, 69.71 g, 489.71 g/d and 442.01 g/d, respectively). Significance variations (P<0.05) were observed in all the nutrient intake parameters. Similarly, nutrients digestibility significantly (P<0.05) differed across the treatments except for dry matter. The study concluded that feeding Yankasa rams with untreated or urea treated soybean husks with supplements did not have any adverse effect on the performance of growing Yankasa rams. It was recommended that, urea-treated soybean husks supplemented with 300 g of groundnut cake/head/day should be used for feeding growing Yankasa rams.