PROXIMATE COMPOSITION OF ENSILED CAMEL’S FOOT PODS WITH RICE STRAWS AT GRADED LEVELS FOR RUMINANT FEEDING

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the chemical composition of ensiled rice straw with different levels of camel foot pod meal. Fifteen glass bottles silo of 20 cl size were used for the ensiling process. The rice straws were properly chopped and mixed with camel pod meal at inclusion levels of 80:20, 70:30, 60:40 and 50:50 representing treatments B, C, D and E respectively and 100:00 (control) as treatment A (rice straw hay) in a completely randomized design. Each mixture was replicated three times and properly ensiled under anaerobic condition for twenty-one days except for the hay. At the end of the experiment, the samples were taken from each mixture for pH determination and proximate analysis. The results showed that the chemical composition of the ensiled materials varied significantly (p<0.05) between the treatment groups. Treatment E had the highest CP (7.64%) and the lowest CF (21.50%), ADF (41.93%) and ADL (22.00%) while treatments B and D had the highest ash content each (27.00%) with treatment D having the lowest pH value of 3.0 among the resultant silage. However the DM (96.50%), CF (35%), ADF (46.91%) and ADL (27.00%) were highest in treatment A than the ensiled treatments. The results suggested that ensiling rice straw with graded levels of camel pods meal up 50:50 proportion will improve the feeding value of rice straws which can serves as ruminant feed during forage scarcity.