Relative Performance of West African Dwarf Goats fed Panicum maximum Supplemented with Raw or Processed Rubber Seed Meal

ABSTRACT Sixteen weaner WAD goats were used in 56-day feeding trial to determine their relative performance when fed with groundnut cake or raw or processed rubber seed (RS) meal. The raw or processed (boiled and toasted) RS were dried and milled and used to formulate RS meal-based diet with cassava peels, palm kernel, brewer dried grain, bone meal and salt. Groundnut cake (GNC) with the above named ingredients, except RS, were used to formulate control diet A (control). Raw RS meal (RRSM) was diet B, boiled RS (BRSM) was diet C and toasted RS (TRSM) was diet D. The animals were randomly divided into 4 treatment groups and fed diets (A–D) containing 20% GNC, RRSM, BRSM or TRSM in a completely randomised design. Daily feed intake (DFI) of 399.12 g by goats fed control diet differed statistically from the intake of 499.55 g and 320.05 g by goats fed raw and boiled, respectively, but the DFI by goats on treatment A was similar to the DFI by goats fed TRSM-D. Average daily weight gain values (g) were 41.07 g, 38.21 g and 41.60 g for RRSM, BRSM and TRSM diets, respectively. These were inferior (P > 0.05) to that of control diet (48.75). Feed to gain ratio was least for diet A (8.18), which was statistically superior (P ≤ 0.05) to 12.16 obtained for goats fed RRSM diet and 10.94 for goats on TRSM diets. Value of feed gain ratio for goats fed diet A was statistically similar to that of goats fed diet C (8.37). Feed cost per kg gain was highest for goats fed diet A (₦ 383.96), whereas goats fed diet C had least cost per kg gain (₦ 113.37). The least feed gain, and least feed cost values obtained for goats fed diet C is an indication that it would cost less to produce goats of market weight using a BRSM-based diet.