Abstract
Conventional feedstuffs in Nigeria are expensive, which has led to the search for cheap and locally available unconventional feeding materials. This study was therefore conducted to determine the dietary effect of roasted pigeon pea meal (RPP) on the performance of rabbits. A total of forty weaner rabbits (20 male and 20 female) Dutch × Chinchilla rabbits with an average initial weight of 725 g and between 5 and 7 weeks old, were allocated into four dietary treatments. Each treatment had ten rabbits and five replicate per treatment in a completely randomized design. The process of roasting pigeon pea seeds took 3 to 5 minutes at approximately 80 oC. The roasted pigeon pea meal (RPP) was used in formulating the diets used for rabbits. Treatment 1 (control) was maize-soybean based diet with 0% RPP while the other treatments contained 10, 20 and 30% RPP in the diets respectively. Diets were formulated to be isonitrogenous and isocaloric. The experiment lasted for five weeks during which data were recorded for feed intake and body weight. The daily feed intake ranged from 42.26 to 57.60 g; daily weight gain, 12.27 to 15.70 g; feed conversion ratio, 3.41 to 4.67 and final live weight, 1284.00 to 1434.75 g. None of these performance parameters were significantly affected by dietary treatments. It was therefore concluded that roasted pigeon pea (RPP) can successfully be included up to 30% in the ration of rabbits without adversely affecting performance.
Highlights
The high cost of conventional protein feedstuff in developing countries as resulted in the search for cheaper and available alternative sources for livestock feed
Results on the daily feed intake showed that rabbits in the control group that received 0% dietary level of roasted pigeon pea meal (RPP) were not significantly different from those that received 10, 20 and 30% dietary levels of RPP
Feed conversion ratios (FCR) were in the range of 3.41 to 4.67 for rabbits on 30 and 20% dietary levels of RPP respectively, the values obtained for the diets were statistically similar
Summary
The high cost of conventional protein feedstuff in developing countries as resulted in the search for cheaper and available alternative sources for livestock feed. There is a great possibility for the exploitation and utilization of non-conventional protein plant sources. Considerable efforts are being made to utilize more diverse local sources of feed ingredients, protein materials, because in many developing countries there is heavy and increasing reliance on soybean meal, fishmeal and other conventional sources of protein for animal feeding (FAO, 2004). Numerous species and varieties of plant proteins are yet to exploited or under-utilized for livestock nutrition. Some of these novel sources may have promising and desirable nutritive quality for future inclusion in animal diet. Future use of non-conventional feed ingredients in farm animal nutrition is a possibility if efficiently and properly exploited
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