Abstract
A 49 days experimental trial into the replacement value of tiger nut seed meal as substitute for maize in diets of local cockerels was studied. Five different diets were formulated such that tiger nut replaced maize at 0% (T1), 25% (T2), 50% (T3), 75% (T4), and 100% (T5) respectively in a Completely Randomized Design. The control diet (T1) contained no tiger nut. One hundred and fifty (150) four weeks old cockerels procured from Joacham farm were used for the experiment to determine the effect of the test diets on dietary proximate compositions, feed intake, weight gain, body weight changes, Feed Conversion Ratio. The cockerels were arranged into five dietary treatments, each containing three replicates with 30 birds per dietary treatment and ten birds per replicate. Results indicated that the control diet did not vary from the test diets in proximate composition. The crude fat, crude fiber and metabolizable energy portrayed an increasing trend whereas, the crude protein, ash and nitrogen free extract portrayed a decreasing trend as the level of tiger nut increased. Body weight and Feed Conversion Ratio differed among the five dietary treatments, whereas, tiger nut inclusion had no effect on daily Feed intake and daily weight gain. T3 showed better FCR (10.58) and high body weight (611.44g), whereas, T4 recorded similar FCR (10.59) but lower body weight (586.31g). Generally, tiger nut inclusion increased FCR compared to the control, suggesting the effects of anti-nutrients and fiber. Tiger nut inclusion did not affect feed intake and crude fiber and as such, the variation in FCR may largely be due to poor utilization of fiber but mainly due to the presence of anti-nutrients. T5 was poorest in FCR (12.98). The poor performance of T5 may be traced to the dilution of available nutrients by high fiber content of the diet. Therefore inclusion of tiger nut at any level lower than 50% will favour optimum growth performance of the cockerel birds. Key words: Tiger nut, Replacement, Cockerel, Growth performance
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