Effect of substituting a commercial grower diet with fermented sweet potato vine-cassava tuber-based diet on the performance of growing pigs
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Date
2021-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Journal of Rural Development
Abstract
In Uganda, the major limitation to pig production is the high cost of quality feeds.
Consequently, smallholder farmers resort to using non-conventional feedstuffs within
their surroundings, which are seasonal and do not solely meet the nutritional requirements
of the pigs. In order to reduce feed costs, this study assessed the performance of growing
pigs fed on a mixture of a commercial diet and a fermented composite of commonly
used local feedstuffs namely sweet potato vines (SPV), cassava tubers (CT) and rice bran
(RB). A completely randomised block design with two treatments (diets), each replicated
three times was adopted for the study. The diets were; commercial diet (control), and a
1:1 mixture of commercial diet and fermented sweet potato vine-cassava tuber-rice bran
composite. The chemical composition of SPV, CT and RB varied, with SPV having the
highest crude protein (10.8%), CT having the highest digestible energy (3032 Kcal/kg) and
RB having the highest crude fibre (20.3%). The crude protein content of the commercial
feed was higher (16.5 %) than that of the mixture (13.33 %), while the mixture had a
higher crude fibre content (11.6 %) than the commercial feed (6.3 %). However, the fat
content and digestible energy content of the two diets did not differ. Grower pigs fed
on the commercial diet registered higher daily weight gains and better feed conversion
ratio (p<0.05) than those fed on the 1:1 mixture of the commercial diet and fermented
composite. Therefore, feeding the 1:1 mixture of commercial and fermented SPV-CT-RB
feeds to pigs lowered the performance of grower pigs and did not meet the goal of reducing
feeding costs. Further research should be conducted at different levels of substitution of
the commercial with the mixed feed to establish the combination that can reduce feeding
costs without compromising the performance of the pigs.
Description
Keywords
Commercial diet, feeding costs, fermentation, non-conventional feedstuffs, pig production
Citation
Kasima, J. S. Mugonola, B. Aliro, T. and Ndyomugyenyi, E. K. 2021. Effect of substituting a commercial grower diet with fermented sweet potato vine-cassava tuber-based diet on the performance of growing pigs. African Journal of Rural Development 6 (2):44-52.