Optimizing Food and Feed in Maize-Livestock Systems in Northern Ghana: The Effect of Maize Leaf Stripping on Grain Yield and Leaf Fodder Quality

Access to feed for livestock during the cropping season is a constraint to the smallholder crop-livestock farming system in northern Ghana due to backyard farming. A two-year (2017-2018) study was conducted to determine the effect of leaf stripping on yield and feed quality in maize-livestock farming systems in the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West regions of Ghana. A factorial treatment combination of three maize-maturity types (extra-early: Abontem, early: Omankwa, and medium: Obatanpa) and three leaf stripping methods (control, leaf stripping at 50% tasseling, and leaf stripping at 50% silking of maize) were laid out in a strip-plot design with four replications per region. Stripped leaf biomass, grain yield, stover, cob size, and nutritional quality of stripped maize leaf were measured. The stripped leaf biomass, stover, and cob width of Obatanpa increased significantly relative to the other maize types in the Northern and the Upper West regions. Abontem recorded a higher (p < 0.01) grain yield than that of the other maize types in the Upper East Region. Leaf stripping had no significant effect on the grain yield and the crude protein (CP) content of maize leaf. The CP of the maize leaf (93-100 g/kg) was above the minimum CP requirement of a quality feed for body weight maintenance of ruminants. This suggests that smallholder maize-livestock farmers could strip maize leaves at either tasseling or silking to feed their livestock during the cropping season in northern Ghana and similar agro-ecological zones in West Africa.