Acceptability And Growth Performance Of West African Dwarf Rams Fed Basal Diet Supplemented With Graded Energy Levels Of Concentrate Mix

The study was conducted to investigate the acceptability and performance characteristics of West African dwarf rams fed basal diet supplemented with graded level of concentrate mix. Twenty five (25) West African Dwarf rams of average weight of 15.01 ± 0.5kg were allotted into five dietary treatments in a Completely Randomized Design. The experiment lasted for 14 weeks. The rams were fed with basal diet (Pennisetum purperum) supplemented with concentrates at 2600 kcal/kg, 2400kcal/kg, 2200 kcal/kg, 2000 kcal/kg and 1800 kcal/kg as treatments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Free choice of intake was determined by cafeteria method using two indices; Coefficient of Preference (CoP) and Percentage preference (Pp) while for the growth performance study, animal were randomly allotted to the five dietary treatments where feed intake, weight gain, and feed conversion ratio were determined. The result revealed that the free choice intake of the diet (135.38-305.23 g/day) was significantly (p<0.05) influenced by the dietary treatments. The concentrates with energy levels of with 2600kcal/kg (T1) and 2400kcal/kg (T2) were inferred acceptable as CoP above unit (1.07 and 1.04) but were not significantly (p>0.05) different among other treatments. The highest percentage (16.57) was recorded with rams fed diets with energy level of 2600kcal/kg Pennisetum purperum (Treatment 1) was ranked first (1st). The feed intake ranged from 580.98 to 642.56g/day which was not significantly (p>0.05) different. Rams fed diet supplemented 2600kcal/kg/day energy level with Pennisetum purperum also recorded the highest daily weight gain (77.86 g/day) which was significantly (p<0.05) different across the treatments. The metabolic weight gain (2.89- 4.08 W0.75 g/day) were significantly (p<0.05) different among the treatments. It was therefore concluded from this study that basal diets (Pennisetum purperum) supplemented at 2600kcal/kg/day was best accepted, preferred and exhibited the best feed conversion ratio without any adverse effect on the West African Dwarf rams.