Published on May 2019 | Animal Nutrition

Haematological profile and serum biochemistry of west African dwarf goats fed sun-dried yellow cashew pulp-based diets.

ackground and Objective: The urgent need for alternative feeding stuffs which are not in competition with humans and animals are not scarce but readily available at low cost led to the study of the effect of sun-dried yellow variety of cashew (Anacardium occidentale) pulp meal on the haematology and serum of west African dwarf goats. Materials and Methods: Four diets containing 0 (control), 10, 20 and 30% sun-dried yellow cashew pulp (SYCP) coded as T1, T2, T3 and T4, respectively, were compared. Twenty growing goats of about 6-7 months having an average initial weight of 6.42 kg were randomly assigned to the treatments; each treatment had five experimental units. The goats were fed and watered ad libitum. Completely randomized design was used in this experiment and data obtained were subjected to one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 95% level of significance. Means that were significantly different were separated using least significant difference (LSD). At the end of the study, blood samples were collected from 3 replicates per treatment into EDTA bottles and EDTA-free bottles for haematological and serum biochemical analyses, respectively. Results: Results showed that the WBC was highly significantly affected (p