Page 120 - Agriculture_Form_Three

Agriculture for Secondary Schools

seed cake, raw soya beans and forage sorghum. Where possible, toxic feedstuffs
should be avoided.

Preparation of livestock feeds
Feeds have to be prepared in ways that will encourage animals to eat them more
readily. Preparation of feeds depends on the species of the intended animal. Ruminant
animals depend mainly on forages. Cattle, sheep and goats are raised on diets that
are made up of at least 70% forages. If they are raised on rangelands then forages
could make up to 100% of the daily ration. The major methods of preparing them
involve cutting and chopping only. Forages can also be preserved into hay or silage.
Pigs and poultry feeds are milled and mixed and sometimes pelleted.
Indoor reared cattle, goats and sheep are usually given chopped forages. Chopping
into small pieces is done to enable enough feed to be loaded into the feeding trough
and encourage feed intake. The use of crop residues often involves chopping into
small pieces. In small-scale farming, chopping of crop residues is done by tools such
as machetes while mechanical choppers are used in large-scale farming. Molasses is
often sprinkled on the chopped material to improve palatability and increase energy
content at the same time.

Pigs and chicken are fed with home-made or commercial feed formulations.
Homemade formulae are based primarily on cereals, cereal brans and oil seed cakes
such as cotton and sunflower seed cakes, fish meal and soya bean meal. Chicken
and pigs can be fed with pellets while rabbits are fed on a combination of succulent
fodder especially Commelina spp. and different type of vines such as sweet potato
vines and pellets.

Concentrate feeds, especially for monogastrics and monogastric herbivores, need
some crushing or wetting depending on the nature of the animal to be fed. For
example, wetting feed encourages intake in pigs and ducks. It also reduces wastage
during feeding. Similarly, crushing feeds for monogastrics and monogastric
herbivores ease feeding. It also improves digestion due to reduction of the feed
particle size. Likewise, feedstuffs with anti-nutritional factors that can be denatured
such as soya beans have to be prepared in appropriate ways to denature the factors.

Activity 5.3
Perform the following tasks in groups:
1. Assess the feeds fed to the animals kept in your school/home and ways of
preparing them for feeding. Your assessment should base on what you have
learnt on criteria for feed selection and preparation of livestock feeds.
2. Summarise your responses together with the lessons learnt in your portfolio

then present them in class.

Student’
Student’s Book Form Twos Book Form Three
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