milk yield and composition of red sokoto and weast african dwarf does raised intensively in a hot humid environment

six red sokoto (rs) and west african dwarf (wad) does, raised intensively in livestock farm of michael okpara university were evaluated for milk yield and composition in a ten-week study. the animals in their first parity were fed cut-and-carry forages in a cafeteria arrangement between 07:00-08:00 h daily and also were allowed access to concentrate supplementation by 14:00 h. the forage consisted of a sward of panicum maximum, centrosema pubescens, calapogonium mucunoides, emilia sanchifolis, tridax procumbens and urenia lobata while the supplement was a 14.8% cp concentrate ration formulated from wheat, soya bean meal, maize offals, palm kernel cake. drinking water was provided ad libitum. the does were hand milked daily from 6-8 am prior to feeding and yield determined for each group. milk samples were bulked per animal per week and analyzed for total solids (ts), butterfat (bf), crude protein (cp), solids-not-fat (snf) and total ash. lactose was, however, determined daily from fresh milk samples and data obtained was analyzed using t-test. results showed that lactose, cp and ash were not influenced (p>0.05) by species; however, butterfat, ts, snf and milk yield differed significantly (p