Abstract Over the years, expenditures of public and private sectors are regulated by the activities in the oil and gas industry. The budget of Nigeria is hinged on the international price of crude oil and any shock on oil price affects the general activities in the country. With quarterly data from the period of 1981Q1 to 2020Q2, the study uses an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity approach to examine oil price volatility and inflation level in Nigeria. An ...
ABSTRACT Three experiments were undertaken to evaluate the nutritive value of urea ammoniated rice straw and urea-molasses block supplement for dry season feeding to sheep. Experiment One compared the feeding value of untreated straw (US), ammoniated straw (AS) and urea-molasses block supplemented straw (UMBS). Three fistulated and three "intact" sheep were assigned to a two 3 x 3 Latin Square designed. Parameters investigated include dry matter intake, lightweight changes and nutrient digest...
ABSTRACT The present study evaluated the acceptability of Pennisetum purpureum by WAD sheep as influenced by manure application. Eighteen West African Dwarf (WAD) rams aged 12 and 13 months old with weights ranging between 10-15kg were used for the study and they were tagged for easy identification. There were six (6) treatment groups of three animals each. The animals were dewormed and dipped to destroy both internal and external parasites before the experiment. The pens were disinfected bef...
Abstract Naromoru is a semi-arid area located on the leeward side of Mt. Kenya, and has more than 15 small sized reservoirs constructed to provide water for livestock, irrigation and domestic use. To increase their usefulness, some reservoirs have been stocked with fish, even though no studies have been carried out to establish their suitability and potential for fish culture. This study therefore aimed at assessing the water quality, fish food availability and fisheries productivity of three...
ABSTRACT This experiment was conducted to determine the best time to introduce finisher diets in the humid tropics. Four treatments (3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th week) were tried in this study that lasted for 9 weeks. A total of one hundred and eighty birds were used for the experiment. The birds were randomly assigned into 4 treatments that were replicated three times with 15 birds in each replicate. The following were measured, growth performance, carcass quality and cost benefit analysis....
ABSTRACT Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi), the world’s largest wild equine, is endemic to the arid Horn of Africa. Originally, its range extended throughout the Horn of Africa but currently it is found only in Kenya and Ethiopia. The population has declined from 15,000 in the late 1970s to between 1,964 and 2,445 animals by the year 2008. The population declines as report by William and Low (2004) is probably as a result of being killed for meat, medicinal purposes, loss of access to critical...
ABSTRACT The effect of forage to concentrate ratios on the peiformance of West African Dwarf (WAD) goats was studied at the Livestock Unit of the Federal University of Agriculture, Umudike for 56 days to determine the optimum combination of forage to concentrate ratio that best support the growth of goat. Twelve WAD goats comprising eight castrated bucks and four does aged between 4 -6 months and weighing between 4.0kg to 8.0kg with an average weight of 6.17kg were used for the study. T...
ABSTRACT A lot of effort is put on 'proximate' threats to conservation, overlooking the 'ultimate' conservation goals in the process. Ultimately, attempts need to be made to conserve not just individuals or populations, but processes that have been on-going over vast geographical space and long evolutionary time, such as gene flow and natural selection. So far, little is known about these historical processes that decisions affecting the management of species in fragmented landscapes are alw...
ABSTRACT Mayfly order (Ephemeroptera) is a widely distributed taxon that is used commonly in the biological assessment of water quality due to its sensitivity to changes in water quality. Despite its values in water quality assessment, studies on the taxa are still very scanty in most tropical countries, including Kenya. Water quality deterioration remains a vital threat in most rivers. The primary objective of this study, was therefore to investigate the spatial and temporal changes in commu...
ABSTRACT The main objective of this study was to establish reference protein composition values for selected local feedstuffs such as dry brewers spent grain (DBSG), cassava meal (CAM), palm kernel cake (PKC) and groundnut cake (GNC) for the Nigerian feed industry by determining amino acids profiles and amino acids compositional quality scores. The selected local feedstuffs were each sourced from five locations from northern and southern parts of Nigeria such that there were five samples for...
ABSTRACT This study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary selenium (se) supplementation on the reproductive performance of sows, preweaning growth performance of their piglets, haematological and antioxidant status of pigs. Twelve (12) crossbred sows (Landrace × Large White) aged 1-2 years with an average body weight (BW) of 56.1 ± 5kg were randomly allotted to four treatment groups of three sows per treatment in a completely randomised design (CRD). The treatment groups compr...
ABSTRACT A 35-day experiment was carried out in a completely randomized design to determine the efficacy of two phytogenic feed additives as veritable alternatives to antibiotics using 320 dayold unsexed commercial Ross 308 broiler chicks. The chicks were randomly divided into four groups of 80 birds each and assigned to four isocaloric (12.60, 13.2 and 13.4 MJ/Kg AMEn) and isonitrogenous (25.0, 22.5 and 20.07 % CP levels) diets designated as follows: diet 1- maizesoybean based diet without ...
ABSTRACT This study which lasted for 52 weeks investigated the effects of dietary Vitamin C (Lascorbic acid) and Vitamin E (dl- alpha tocopheryl acetate) on the performance of laying hens in the humid tropics. A total of 240 twenty-four week old Golden Neslink pullets were randomly selected from a flock of 550 birds and randomly divided into sixteen treatments of 15 pullets. The birds were initially vent examined to ensure that they were at point of lay before commencing the study. Each...
ABSTRACT There is potential in Kenya to utilize forage sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L) Lam) cultivars as livestock feed. There are many cultivars of forage sweet potato in Kenya whose feeding values have not been evaluated. The objectives of the current study were: 1) evaluate forage sweet potato cultivars for crude protein (CP) yield and digestibility at different harvesting ages, 2) evaluate their conservation potential as silage or hay and 3) determine sheep growth performance and goat ...
ABSTRACT Mastitis in dairy goats was investigated with the objective of establishing the effect of management and the identification of the key causative agents through common diagnostic procedures of somatic cell counts, bacteriological identification and, for the first time in goat mastitis, by use of Polymerase Chain Reaction. A cross-sectional survey, using a structured questionnaire was conducted in three agro-climatic regions of Coast, Nyanza and Rift Valley, with goat keeping clusters...