EFFECTS OF DRIED YELLOW CASHEW PULP IN DIETS OF WEST AFRICAN DWARF GOATS ON IN VITRO FERMENTATION PARAMETERS, VOLUME OF GAS PRODUCED AND FERMENTATION CHARACTERISTICS

Twenty growing West African Dwarf (WAD) goats aged 6-7 months, with an average initial weight of 6.42kg were randomly assigned to four treatments; containing 0 (control), 10, 20 and 30 % dried cashew pulp coded as T 1 , T 2 , T 3 and T 4, respectively. Each treatment had five experimental units. The effect of in vitro fermentation on first gas (a), potential gas production (b), potentially degradable fraction (a+b), rate of gas production (c), organic matter digestibility (OMD), metabolisable energy (ME), short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), methane (CH 4 ) production and in vitro gas production (IVGP) of the experimental diets were studied. Completely randomized design was used and data obtained were subjected to Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and means that were significantly different were separated using LSD. Results showed that for the treatments, in vitro gas production for incubation periods of 6 hours was significant (P < 0.05), while those for 9, 12, 15, 18 and 24 hours were highly significant (P < 0.01). Values of IVGP, ME, OMD, SCFA and Methane for the treatments were highly significant (P < 0.01). Apart from the values for first gas produced, all the other fermentation characteristics for the treatments were highly significantly affected (P < 0.01) by the levels of inclusion of cashew pulp meal. The results also showed that T 1, T 2 andT 3 were not different from each other in in vitro gas production (at 24hrs), ME, OMD and SCFA, hence the diets containing sun-dried cashew pulp meal performed similarly with the control diet.