Performance of growing goats fed Gliricidia maculata

Sixteen female crossbred (local x Anglo-Nubian) goats raised from 20-30 kg were fed a basal diet of cassava chips, cotton seed cake, rice bran and rice straw, where 0, 30, 40 or 50% of the diet dry matter was replaced with leaves from Gliricidia maculata. All the diets containing Gliricidia resulted in a higher intake than the diet without Gliricidia, but the diet with 30% Gliricidia gave the best intake and the highest growth rate, 105 g per day. Total intake was 2.8% of the body weight (BW). Five male goats of the same breed and size were used to study the effect of supplementing rice straw with different levels of Gliricidia leaves on intake and apparent digestibility of the diets. Increasing the amount of Gliricidia leaves decreased the rice straw intake but increased intake of total dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF) and crude protein (CP). Supplementing with Gliricidia leaves improved the dry matter digestibility (DMD), the OM digestibility and the CP digestibility in the mixed Gliricidia and rice straw diet, compared to pure rice straw, but the values were somewhat lower than could be expected by calculations from the pure rice straw and Gliricidia diets. The DMD of Gliricidia was 64.1%. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.