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Below is a feed formulae that can make goats to grow at a rate of 54g per day:
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70% Gliricidia sepium, 30% Cassava peel (dried under the sun to remove toxin) and salt lick.
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A 6 months old goat weighing 6.1kg was used in the experiment. When growing at this rate, the goat will gain 19.8kg in 1yr, ataining 25.9kg. When killed and deboned, we'll be left with 13.2kg meat, considering the fact that goats normally have 51% dressing percentage.
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Pictures of Gliricidia
Image source: http://tropical.theferns.info/viewtropic...dia+sepium
Image source: https://www.feedipedia.org/node/552
The pic below is Leucaena leucocephala from wikipedia. It is another good legume tree for ruminants.
Experiment Source: https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=BAG...el&f=false
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Another feed fmla that gave 43g per day of growth consists of 30% Gliricidia sepium (air dried for 15 minutes before feeding) and 70% chopped guinea grass. Growing local goats in Laos weighing 11 - 18kg were used in the experiment. Water and mineral lick were avalable at all time. They found out that to gain 1kg in weight, the goats have to eat 10.3kg in feed. The dry weight of G. Sepium eaten per day is 119g. That of guinea grass is 324g.
Picture of guinea grass
Experiment Source: http://www.ajas.info/upload/pdf/15_253.pdf
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Nigerian west African Dwarf goats fed abundant cassava peel and moringa leaves (250g dry weight per day) gained only 20.8g/day in weight.
This is quite poor and it is probably due to the small amount to moringa fed. However, it can still serve as a good maintenance diet (I.e. a cheap diet used to maintain the weight of an animal. There will be no weight loss).
Experiment Source: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eaa9/b3...e94745.pdf
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Red Sokoto and Sahelian goats gained 60g/day in weight when fed digitaria smutsii hay and concentrate. In terms of dry weight (that is, with no moisture in them), the hay was fed at 1.5% of the goats' body weight and the concentrate at 1.5% too.
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The concentrate consists of 30% maize, 45.5% maize offal, 18.5% soya beans meal, 1% salt and 2% bone meal.
When groundnut cake was used to replace soya beans meal, growth was 28.4g/day. With cotton seed cake it was 22.3g/day Water and mineral lick were available at all time.
7 months old goats were used and the experiment lasted for 90 days.
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Pic of red sokoto and sahelian,digitaria smutsii
Pictures of the six studied goat breeds. a West African Dwarf, b Red Sokoto, c Sahel, d Alpine, e Spanish, and f Saanen.
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Pict...675148/amp
Digitaria smutsii picture below. Also called common finger grass, digit grass, pangola grass, woolly finger grass (English); digitaria (French); pangolagras (German); pangola, pasto pangola (Spanish).
Experiment source: https://scialert.net/fulltextmobile/?doi...759&org=11
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07-31-2019, 09:44 PM
A Goat Feed Fmla that gave 62g per day Growth
The feed formula here is very simple. Just 2 ingredients in the concentrate.
This experiment was conducted in Cameroun with West African Dwarf Goats (9-12 months old and weighing 9-15kg). They were fed fresh Guatemala grass and concentrate (cassava flour, groundnut cake and 1% di-calcium phosphate). A salt lick was available free choice.
Concentrate containing 200g cassava flour plus 100g groundnut cake gave 52g/day growth rate.
200g cassava flour plus 150g groundnut cake gave 62g/day growth rate.
If you have cheap access to cassava flour and groundnut cake, this is a good formula to try out. It may even worth it to grow your own cassava. And of course, you can replace the Guatemala grass with any other grass that is available. Elephant grass is a good alternative.
Guatemala grass Morphological description
Robust perennial grass, forming large mats up to 5 m across with tangled stolons and rhizomes; shallow-rooted. Flowering culms up to 3 m tall, up to 5 cm diameter at the base. Leaf blades up to 120 cm long and remarkably (up to 10 cm) wide, shortly tomentose on the upper surface, under surface and upper leaf sheaths are glabrous .
Terminal and axillary inflorescences can have 5–8 slender racemes.
From http://www.tropicalforages.info/key/fora...rsonii.htm
Experiment source: https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=BAG...te&f=false
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In one experiment, goats fed untreated rice straw plus fresh cassava leaves gained 45g/day in weight Seng sokerya and Rodriguez 2001).
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Sample Feed For Breeding Goats
Here is the fmla:
25% concentrate and 75% fresh fodder (panicum and other browse plants). The concentrate consists of:
Maize offal: 50%
Wheat offal: 6.5%
Palm kernel Cake: 39%
Bone meal: 2%
Periwinkle: 1%
Vitamins-Minerals premix: 0.259%
Salt: 1.25%
This concentrate will have a crude protein content of 13.9% and metabolic energy of 2980kcal/kg
Give the concentrate at 300g per doe per day. If the doe have kids, give additional 150g per kid per day.
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A Goat Feed that Gave 52.5g per day Growth
In this experiment, the feed was napier grass and a concentrate fed at 2% of the goats' body weight per day. The grass was available all the time. When the concentrate part was reduced to 1% and 0.5% of the goats' body weight per day, growth was 34.1 and 10.2g/day respectively.
The concentrate consisted of: maize: 35%
rice bran:30%
palm kernel cake: 32%
vitamins-minerals premix: 2%
salt: 1%.
The experiment lasted 89 days and female goats weighing about 12kg were used.
Experiment Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23096766/
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Palm Kernel Cake to WAD Goats
In an experiment, PKC gave good result when it was used as the only protein supplement. Wilted guinea grass plus pkc was better than the grass plus brewers' grain, similar to grass plus cotton seed cake and lower than grass plus soya beans meal.
Partial substitution of maize and soya beans meal in lactating goat diets at 30% in the supplement (fed at 18% of diet dry matter) was not bad.
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Hay vs Straw
Hay is dried grass. During drying, some nutrients are lost but most are retained. The greener the color of hay, the higher the nutrient content. Brown color means that lots of nutrients have been lost. This can occur when the hay is dried under direct sunlight or when rain fall on it during drying. Browning of hay hay can also occur when it is stored for too long or when stored improperly (like exposure to sun, high temperatures or rain). The best way to dry hay is to dry it as quickly as possible under indirect sunlight. Once grass have been cut, nutrient loss start as the plant respire. This will continue as long as the grass stays fresh. Prevent this by spreading the grass under direct sunlight for fast drying. This usually take an hour or two on a sunny day. Once the grass feels dry to touch, form them into a windrow so that the grass below will be shaded by those above. This is important because direct sunlight bleaches the grass and lead to nutrient loss. Every hour or so, turn the windrow to expose a new set of grass to the sun. Thus, no grass will be exposed to the sun long enough to get bleached. Once the grass have dried properly, store them under shade and bail when they cool down.
Never feed moldy hay to goats. It can cause serious health effects.
Straw is the dried stalk and leaves that are left after grain have been harvested. It has very little nutritional value and is often used as a cheap and abundant source of feed and as bedding. Nutritional value of straw can be economically improved by treating it with urea (more on this later). Small ruminants like goats can select the leaves ( more nutritious) and reject the stalks (less nutritious), unlike cattles. So, straw can be fed to goats and the leftover is then treated with urea before feeding to cattles.
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Lots of gud info in one place. Thanks for sharing.
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I appreciate these info a lot! Thanks.
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A goat feed fmla that gave 59 and 72.1g growth per day.
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FMLA 1: Napier grass + a commercial pellet fed at 1% of live weight.
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Meaning of "1% of live weight.": This simply means that the quantity of commercial pellet fed is 1% of the goat's live weight. Eg, if the goat weighs 10kg, 1% of 10kg = (1/100) x 10kg = 0.1kg or 100g. So a 10kg goat is fed 100g of commercial pellet everyday.
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Note: The Napier grass is made available to the goats at all times.
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FMLA 2: Napier grass + 1% PKC of goat's live weight + 100g molasses + 55g soya waste.
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Daily gain was 59g for FMLA 1 and 72.1g for FMLA 2. Feed conversion ratio (amount of feed consume for every 1kg weight gain) = 10.4:1 for FMLA 1 and 9.6:1 for fmla 2.
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8 young female goats were used.
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Source: https://scialert.net/abstractmobile/?doi...13.527.534
Food for the Nation.
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what is Gliricidia sepium ?
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(02-28-2021, 12:34 AM)prof Wrote: what is Gliricidia sepium ?
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It is a tree with proteinous leaves for ruminants
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