Journal of Global Agriculture and Ecology

The study was conducted to investigate the chemical composition of untreated and microbial treated maize cob and husk and digestibility of treated maize cob and husk in a complete diet by West African dwarf goats. Three goats per treatment were allotted to six dietary treatments in a completely randomized design. The chopped maize cobs and husks were sterilized for 60 minutes, inoculated with mixture of 15 ml each of Neurospora crassa and Lactobacillus delbrueckii, incubated for 5 days and air dried. The treated maize cob and husk were incorporated in the diets at the rate of 0 % (diet A), 20 % (diet B), 30 % (diet C) [maize cob diets], 0 % (diet D), 20 % (diet E), 30 % (diet F) [maize husk diets] respectively. The digestibility trial lasted for 21days. Chemical composition results showed that dry matter improved from 84.85 – 86.95%, protein from 7.00 -9.01% and the crude fibre reduced from 30.45 – 20.05 % for maize husk and dry matter from 82.27- 84.45%, protein (3.56 -6.79%), crude fibre (33.66 -22.15%) for maize cobs. Significant differences (P<0.05) were observed in the nutrient digestibility as superior crude protein digestibility (82.93%) was observed in goats fed diet containing 30% treated maize husk. Conclusively, microbial treatment of maize cob and husk enhanced the dry matter, protein and considerably reduced the fibre fractions of the treated samples as well as improved digestibility.