Rumen Fermentation Characteristics of West African Dwarf Sheep Fed Supplementary Diets Containing Water-Washed Neem (azadirachtaindica A. Juss) Fruit and Garlic (Allium sativum)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted for 37 days for the purpose of investigating Rumen Fermentation Characteristics of West African Dwarf Sheep Fed supplementary diets containing Water-Washed Neem (Azadirachtaindica a. Juss0 Fruit and garlic (Alliumsativum). The experimental design used was a completely randomized design and the obtained data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). 12 West African dwarf Sheep were randomly allotted into 4 treatments of 3 replicates per treatment, these treatments were supplements containing 0%, 5%, 10% neem and 1.25% garlic. Panicum maximum was fed as the basal diet. The basal and supplementary diets were fed at ratio 50:50 and at 3% body weight on dry matter bases. At the end of 37 days feeding trial, rumen liquor from the experimental animals were collected for rumen fermentation characteristics and in vitro gas production. The pH of the rumen liquor had values ranging from 6.30 - 7.00 and there was a significant difference between the 4 treatments. Treatment IV had the highest acetic acid and butyric acid production while treatment II had the lowest. However, there was no significant difference amongst the 4 treatments. Propionic acid was highest for treatment I while treatment II had the lowest value. For the propionic acid, the treatment that had no inclusion of neem and garlic (the control treatment) had the highest mean value for the study. The in vitro production obtained for a standard feed sample incubated in the rumen liquor obtained from the 4 treatments were significantly affected by the inclusion of neem and garlic. It is then concluded that the inclusion of neem at 10% and garlic at 1.25% in the supplementary feed of WAD sheep will significantly reduce methane production and support ruminant production.