Small food plots are commonly used for managing wildlife and are often planted with high quality forages like ryegrass, clovers, chicory, or even alfalfa. These plots supplement wildlife nutritional needs during times when forage and browse is short or has poor quality. For example, alfalfa, lab lab, or millet food plots can provide high quality forage during summer months when whitetail does a...

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 consis...

Forage conservation is an important potential solution to seasonal variation in feed quality and quantity herder-farmer conflicts sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Considerable variations exist the type of forages conserved preservation methods across SSA. Hay from cultivated commonly made with mechanical mowers balers by large-scale commercial farms. In contrast, smallholder farmers, who dominate farm...

Studies across 5 yr involving 938 British-breed crossbred cattle (372 heifers, 566 steers) were used to evaluate the effects of grazing alternate summer and fall forages on slaughter breakeven cost of various beef production systems. Grazed summer forage combinations included 1) continuous brome, 2)brome and warm-season grasses, 3) brome and alfalfa or sudangrass, 4) brome and a monoculture of ...

This work compared the effect of ensiling technique and application of urea or a cellulase± hemicellulase enzyme mixture (FSO2) on the conservation of whole crop wheat. Awheat crop harvested at 600 g dry matter (DM) kgÿ1 was conserved with or without the application of urea (40 g kgÿ1 DM) and four levels of FSO2 (0, 1750, 3500 and 15 503 ml tÿ1 DM). Each forage (5 kg DM) was conserved in polyth...

The study was conducted to compare the effects of feeding Acacia auriculata (AA), Gmelina arborea (GA), Albizia lebbeck (AL) and Butryospermum parkii (BP) tree forages as a sole feed for Nigerian goats. Four goats (Yankasa) averaging one year and weighing 11.7±1.8 kg were used to measure the feed intake, digestibility and nitrogen balance. The leaves were offered ad libitum. Dry matter (DM) int...

Corn stover (CS) is an abundant lignocellulosic by-product of the grain industry. Ferulic acid esterase producing (FAE+)-lactobacilli can potentially improve ensiled forages’ nutritive value through hydrolysis ferulic ester bonds present in cell walls during fermentation process, but this has not been addressed CS silage. In study, we characterized 8 FAE+ lactobacilli regarding their FAE activi...

Ruminants raised for meat and milk are important sources of protein in human diets worldwide. Their unique digestive system allows them to derive energy and nourishment from forages, making use of vast areas of grazing lands not suitable for arable cropping or biofuel production and avoiding direct competition for grain that can be used as human food. However, sustaining an ever-growing populat...