Sustainable utilisation of cassava plant for feeding monogastric animals

Abstract

Nigeria, which produces an estimated 34 million metric tons of cassava annually, is the leading producer of cassava world-wide (FAO, 2004a). There have been several studies by many scientists on the use of cassava for livestock feeding. Most of these studies centred on the use of either flour or peels or leaves. Besides, most of these studies confirmed the suitability of cassava flour to replace maize partially or wholly in the diets of all species of livestock. The replacement of maize with cassava flour was reported to be economical. These findings appeared to have been over taken by events and recently in Nigeria, cassava has been attracting interest as an industrial crop having found various uses in the starch, pharmaceutical, bread, and biscuit industries. This has made the price of cassava flour to be on the increase. Based on the high cost of cassava flour, its use to replace maize is becoming unattractive economically. As a result of this, attempt was made to reduce the flour content in the diets of monogastric animals considerably by adding more of peels, leaves, and tender-stems. Most of these by products from cassava especially peel, leaves, and tender-stems are under-utilised as they are often left to rot away after harvest on farms and homesteads where cassava is grown in Nigeria. Hence, the objective of these studies was to evaluate the effect of inclusion of various products and by products obtainable from cassava in a single or composite diet on the performance of monogastric animals.