Milk Yield (Offtake), Composition and Microbiological Quality in West African Dwarf Goats Fed Concentrate Diets with Varying Levels of Moringa oleifera Leafmeal and Seedmeal

Abstract

The study was carried out to investigate the effect of feeding varying inclusion levels of Moringa oleifera leafmeal (MOL) and defatted Moringa oleifera seedmeal (DMOS), on milk yield (offtake), milk proximate composition and milk microbilolgical quality of sixteen lactating West African Dwarf (WAD) goats. The completely randomized design with four dietary treatments and three does per treatment was used. Average milk yield ranged from 116.00 g/day to 186.00 g/day (early lactation), 78.00 to 170 g/day (mid lactation) and 32.00 to 184.00 g/day (late lactation). Highest mean milk yield was 174.00 g/day for diet T3 (0.30% (MOL) and 0% (DMOS)). Ranges of the milk proximate composition were: 13.50 to 17.22% (total solids), 3.60 to 6.05% (fat), 3.17 to 5.45% (protein), 9.88 to 11.17% (solids-not-fat), 0.73 to 0.82% (ash) and 4.93 to 6.36% (lactose). There exist significant (P<0.01), but negative correlations between milk yield versus fat and protein (r = - 0.691, - 0.643 respectively). Total viable bacterial counts ranged from 1.9 x 10⁶ to 8.6 x 10⁸ cfu/ml. Total coliform counts ranged between 3.7 x 10⁶ and 3.3 x 10⁹ cfu/ml. Total fungal counts ranged from 3.1 x 10³ to 3.4 x 10⁵ cfu/ml. This experiment revealed that the inclusion of Moringa oleifera leafmeal and seedmeal in the concentrate diets of lactating WAD goats resulted in highest mean milk yield (offtake) at the 0.30% (MOL) and 0% (DMOS) dietary level. The raw milk was of poor microbiological quality (>5.0 x 10⁶).

Keywords: Milk yield (offtake), quality, goats