Growth responses of yearling Yankasa rams to four different hays and concentrate supplementation

The objective of the study was to ascertain the feed intake, acceptability of hay and weight gain by yankasa rams fed basal diets of either natural grass hay (NGH) as control, Digitaria exilis hay (DEH), Bracharia decumbens hay (BDH) or Digitaria decumbens hay (DDH) along with equal amounts of concentrate feed as supplement. The 10-week experiment was conducted at the College farm of the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom, Plateau State, Nigeria using Completely Randomized Design. The four hays were allotted randomly to twenty rams housed in separate pens. There were five rams per treatment. Each animal was served 2 kg of the hay treatment, plus 200 g concentrate supplement. The parameters measured were feed intake (FI), water consumed (WC), hay acceptability (HA), weekly weight (WW), total weight gained (TWG) and daily weight gain (DWG) by rams. Hay treatment affected weekly weight of yankasa rams significantly. Daily weight gain was 142.9, 60.7, 42.9 and 10.7 g per day for rams fed with BDH, DDH, DEH and NRH, respectively. At week 10, rams fed with BDH were significantly heavier by 78.0 % than rams fed NGH and heavier by 33.2 % on aggregate than rams fed with DEH and DDH. Total weight gain of rams fed BDH was 809.1 % higher than TWG of animals fed with the control (NGH) treatment. Yankasa rams consumed 2.5 litres of water per head daily. The rams consumed significantly more of the natural grass hay (NGH) than the other hays. Acceptability of NGH, DEH and BDH was similar but DDH was not well accepted by rams. The great prospects of Bracharia decumbens hay for fattening yankasa rams, warrants expansion of this grass by NVRI.