Chemical composition and digestibility of Prosopis juliflora pods and leaves and effect of pods in ration on the Performance of fattening Tali kids

Mesquite or Kahoor (Prosopis Juliflora swartz) fimily Leguminosae, sub-fimily Mimosoideaes is a perennial, fast-growing, ever- green and drought resistant shrub or tree that planted and developed in the south parts of Iran and is known as Kahoor. This plant can be used for preventing soil erosion and stability of sand dunes. It also provides fruit (pod) as animal feed. The young branches (browses) and pods of Kahoor is good goats and camel. The aim of this study was determining the chemical composition and digestibility of Prosopis Juliflora pods and leaves and to using Prosopis Juliflora pods (PJP) in diet on the growth Performance of fattening Tali goats.

In this experiment 24 Kahoor pods and leaves samples were collected randomly from three intensive cultivated planted areas in Hormozgan province. Samples sun dried and mixed to get homogenous and then were used for chemical analysis. Also, Kahoor pods and leaves were collected, dried and ground in this study the In vivo digestibility of Kahoor pods and leaves were determined by eight Goat. Eighteen Tali male Kids with initial body weight of 13.20 ±1.5 kg were randomly divided into two equal groups on the basis of age and live weight (LW) used in a experimental design with two treatments and nine replications. Goats fed with control diet and the other group with diet of 28.5 % PJP (30% forage to 70 % concentrate ratio) for 14 weeks. The diets were offered into two equal halves daily at 08:00 am and 16:00 pm hours. The kids were weighted in initial trial and every 2 weeks after 16 h feed deprivation using a suspended weighing scale and calculated their weight changes. The average body weight gain, average dry matter intake and feed conversion ware determined. Chemical composition and digestibility, Feed intake, body weight changes and feed conversion data were analyzed using the SAS 9.1(2001) software and GLM procedures, with two treatments and nine repeats per treatment with using T- test.

The result of this experiment showed that the chemical composition mean of PJP and PJL samples were contained 88.4,42.31% dry matter, 92.61,90.52% organic matter, 13.82,20.3% crude protein, 5.42,9.48% ash,40.3,54.22% neutral detergent fiber, 26.98,31.84% acid detergent fiber, 1.04,2.26% calcium, 0.21,0.27% phosphors (on DM basis) respectively. The average digestibility coefficient pods and leaves for Dry matter, Organic matter, Neutral detergent fiber and Acid detergent fiber is 60.99, 55.74 and 62.16, 57/69 and 56.25, 59.78 and 47.45, 43.05, respectively. The average daily gain, feed intake and feed conversion efficiency were 87.28 g, 783.3g, 8.6 and 90.55g, 823.3g, 8.3 respectively for Kids received control and PJP diet that were not statistically different. Total cost of feed and also, cost of meat production was cheaper than control group. The result of this study indicated that the PJP similar to commercial concentrate has supplied kids requirements that can be suitable replacement for commercial concentrate in fattening kids diets.

Results indicated that pods and leaves contain a large amount of essential nutritive material and can used T.M.R. with other feed in maintenance conditions animal rations after drying and reducing anti nutrition materials. Also; that PJP can be used in fattening kids concentrate to 28.5 % DM rate without negative and side effect on growth performance and FCR goats and reduced 30% the feeding cost economically.