Growth performance and nutrient digestibility of West African Dwarf Sheep fed high roughage diet containing &lt;i&gt;Saccharomyces cerevisiae&lt;/i&gt;

C.O Osita,N.E Ikeh,I.E Ezemagu,V.C Udeh,C.E Oyeagu,E.A Akuru,A.O Ani

doi:10.4314/as.v18i3.5

Abstract

A twelve-week study was conducted to determine the effects of dietary inclusion of yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ) on growth performance and nutrient digestibility of West African dwarf (WAD) sheep. A total of 12 lambs (6 rams and 6 ewes) were randomly allotted to three treatment diets as follows: treatment I was a high roughage diet with no inclusion of S. cerevisiae ; treatment II was a high roughage diet with 0.75 g of S. cerevisiae per kg of diet; treatment III was a high roughage diet with 1.5 g of S. cerevisiae per kg of diet. The chemical composition of the high roughage diet is as follows: dry matter (89.20%), organic matter (85.87%), crude protein (13.21%), crude fibre (16.40%), ether extract (3.30%), ash (4.33%), nitrogen free extract (51.96%), neutral detergent fibre (45.25%) and acid detergent fibre (26.62%). Each group was made up of four replicates with one sheep serving as a replicate. There were significant ( p 0.05) affected. There were significant ( p < 0.05) differences among treatments in dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), crude fibre (CF), neutral detergent fibre (NDF) and acid detergent fibre (ADF) digestibility coefficients values. Based on these results addition of 1.5 g of S. cerevisiae per kg of diet is recommended. Keywords: yeast, ruminant, protein, faeces, fibre

Highlights

The demand for animal protein in Nigeria has been on the increase because of the rise in human population
The present study was conducted to determine the effects of dietary inclusion of yeast (S. cerevisiae) on growth performance and nutrient digestibility of West African dwarf sheep
Our result support the findings of Haddad and Goussous (2005) who indicated that feeding yeast culture increased the digestibility coefficients of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), neutral detergent fibre (NDF) and acid detergent fibre (ADF), which resulted in higher average daily weight gain (ADWG) and better feed efficiency in fattening lambs fed 80% concentrate diet

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The demand for animal protein in Nigeria has been on the increase because of the rise in human population. Supplementation of yeast in the ruminant diet is known to improve feed intake (Robinson and Garrett, 1999), milk production (Abd El-Ghani, 2004), weight gain (Salama et al, 2002), digestion (Jouany et al, 1998), numbers of anaerobic and cellulolytic bacteria (Newbold et al, 1995) and alter the patterns of volatile fatty acids (Arcos-Garcia et al, 2000) or even supply the animal with unknown growth factors (Girard and Dawson, 1995) Against these backdrops, the present study was conducted to determine the effects of dietary inclusion of yeast (S. cerevisiae) on growth performance and nutrient digestibility of West African dwarf sheep. Growth and Nutrient Digestibility of Dwarf Sheep on Diet Containing Saccharomyces cerevisiae 26

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION