Performance of Growing Goats Fed Urea Sprayed Maize Stover and Supplemented with Graded Levels of Tithonia Diversifolia

A study was carried out to examine the effect of supplementing urea-sprayed maize stover with incremental levels of Tithonia diversifolia (Tithonia) forage on dry matter (DM) intake, digestibility and live weight changes. Fifteen crossbred bucks were used in a completely randomised design for a duration of 7 weeks. The treatments comprised of a control: the basal diet (maize stover sprayed with 1% urea) plus 100 g maize germ offered alone or supplemented with: 10 (T1), 20 (T2), 30 (T3) or 40% (T4) Tithonia on a dry matter basis. All animals were allowed ad libitum access to water and mineral lick. Supplementing maize stover with Tithonia resulted in increased total DM intake (p<0.05) from 376.7 (control), to 444.1 (T1), 533.1 (T2), 519.7 (T3) and 578.9 g/day (T4) but did not significantly (p>0.05) influence the intake of stover. Diet DM digestibility increased with supplementation with T3 recording the highest value of 66.5% which was 10.6% higher than the control. Supplementation significantly increased daily weight gains (p<0.05). T4 had the highest ADG (43.7 g/day), even though there was no difference between T4 and T3 (35.7 g/day). In goats, Tithonia should be included up to 30% of ration on a DM basis for optimum production. The higher level of inclusion (40%) may be used for higher total output in terms of meat and milk but with few animals.