Dried poultry droppings supplemented with FMS can improve performance of goats

Goats represent major breed of domestic animals in Asia and provides enormously to food, rural employment as well as gross domestic product. Most important function of the goats is meat production.

In India, 95% of goat meat produced is consumed locally and the per capita availability is far below the requirement. Therefore, to fill this gap, production of the animals should be amplified. Feeding is considered as a necessary aspect of goat rearing venture and may be the uppermost expense of any meat goat operation. Goats raised for meat require elevated quality feed as well as perfect levels of several different nutrients in order to attain highest profit potential¹.

In Konkan region, finger millet is regarded as the main cereal crop. Its by-products are used to feed the animals as rough ages.

Finger millet straws (FMS) are by-product of finger millet and are coarse, high-fibre, low-protein as well as low-digestibility roughages.

They play a significant function as filler and can serve as an energy source for ruminant animals². These by products possess poor nutritive value, thus they should be mixed with nitrogen and energy sources to fulfill maintenance and production necessities³.

Accordingly, a novel study was carried out to investigate the impact of dried poultry dropping based diets on the feed intake and nutrient digestibility of konkan kanyal goats that were fed with finger millet straw. For this purpose, 30 goats having aged above 12 months with weight 14.00-14.67 kg were selected and randomized block design was followed⁴.

The experimental goats were randomly categorized into 5 treatments (T_I-T₅). T₁ was goats fed with 0% dried poultry droppings based diets (DPDBD), T₂, T₃, T₄ as well as T₅ were fed with 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% DPDBD, respectively. Feed intake was then checked and digestibility coefficient was calculated⁴.

At the end of this experiment, it was found that feeding dried poultry droppings based diets up to 80% to tested goats that were fed with finger millet straw as basal diet show satisfactorily performance. Though, better performance was noted at 40% inclusion. Conclusively, scientists recommended including the dried poultry droppings at 40% in the diet of the animals in order to achieve enhanced performance.

References:

1. Luginbuhl, J.M. and M.H. Poore, 1998. Nutrition of meat goats. Department of Animal Science, NCSU.
2. Heuze, V. and G. Tran, 2015. Rice straw. Feedipedia, A programme by INRA, CIRAD, AFZ and FAO.
3. Heuze, V. and G. Tran, 2015. Finger millet (Eleusine coracana) straw. Feeddipedia, A Programme by INRA, CIRAD, AFZ and FAO.
4. A.A. Bello , 2017. Feed Intake and Nutrient Digestibility of Konkan Kanyal Goats Fed Finger Millet Straw Supplemented With Varying Levels of Dried Poultry Dropping Based Diets. Asian J. Anim.  Sci., 11: 230-236.