Nutritional Evaluation of Some Locally Available Ingredients use for Least-cost Ration Formulation for African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) in Nigeria

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the proximate composition and the digestibility of nutrients and energy in protein-rich (dried fish, duckweed meal, blood meal, shrimp waste meal) carbohydrate-rich (rice bran, wheat offal, cassava root meal, cocoyam root meal) and in oilseed cake (groundnut cake, soybean cake, sesame cake, cotton seed cake) feedstuffs to improve least-cost diet formulations and to allow effective substitution for fishmeal. The digestibility of various ingredients was measured by using an inert marker in the feed and by using the Guelph faeces collecting system. The Basal diet (B) was formulated to contain 273.84 g kg super(-1) protein, 79.06 g kg super(-1) lipid and 20.25 MJ kg super(-1) DM gross energy. The test diets were composed of the ingredient of interest plus Cr sub(2)O sub(3), making up 30% of the dietary Dry Matter (DM) and B making up 70% of the DM. ADC values of the ingredients tested were generally high especially for dried fish. It was found that dried fish (97.48%) among the protein-rich ingredients, cocoyam root meal (89.44%) among carbohydrate-rich ingredient and sesame cake (90.95%) among the oilseeds were the best ingredients tested. The ADC of energy in the test diets was high and ranged from 80.3 to 88.6% (average 83.3%, SD 2.3). African catfish has the digestive potentials to utilize all the ingredients tested effectively. This information will serve as baseline data in the selection of locally available ingredients for the formulation of more efficient, economical diets for Clarias gariepinus.