Asian Journal of Agriculture and Food Sciences (ISSN: 2321 – 1571) Volume 06 – Issue 01, February 2018 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com ) 39 Study of Carcass Characteristics of Goats Fed Rice Straw Supplemented with Moringa (Moringa oleifera Lam.) Foliage Nasrin Sultana 1,* , Abd Razak Alimon 2 , Khan Shahidul Huque 1 , Awis Qurni Sazili 2 , Halimatun Yaakub 2 , S. Mohammad Jahangir Hussain 1 and Nani Gopal Das 1 1 Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute, Savar, Dhaka-1341, Bangladesh 2 Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University Putra Malaysia, Serdang-43400, Selangor, Malaysia * Corresponding author’s email: nassul2003 [AT] yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT—The study was conducted to investigate the effects of different dietary levels of Moringa foliage on the growth performance, and carcass quality of Black Bengal goats. Thirty buckling of 6 to 8 months of age with an average initial live weight (LW) of 8.07 (±0.87) kg were allocated into five different dietary groups having six in each group for 105 days. Keeping molasses treated rice straw ad libitum as sole diet, 70% of dietary dry matter (DM) requirement was supplied with a conventional concentrate which was replaced with Moringa foliage in treatment diets at the rate of 25, 50, 75 and 100%, respectively. Consequently, Moringa foliage represented 17.8, 35.6, 52.9 and 67.2% of total dietary DM intake or 0.85, 1.7, 2.5 and 3.4% of LW of goats in treatment diets which did not affect the daily gain, DM intake and digestibility (P>0.05) significantly. The dietary DM intake and LW gain ranged from 4.6 to 4.8% of average LW and 67.3 to 79.3 g/d. The slaughter weight and dressing percentage, ranging from 15.0 to 15.6 kg and 51.9 to 52.5, did not vary significantly (P>0.05). The lean to fat ratio in carcass was 15.0 and 11.8 when diet contained 52.9 and 67.2% Moringa foliage, respectively which were significantly (P<0.05) higher than other diets. It was concluded that Moringa foliage may be included to the diet of goat up to 67.2% or 3.4% of LW which will produce more lean than fat without affecting dietary intake and daily gain. Keywords— Intake of Moringa foliage, Black Bengal goat, digestibility, carcass composition _________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION In the tropics, small ruminant animals are usually raised on crop residues, native pasture, agro-industrial by products and the non-conventional feed resources, mainly fodder, from shrubs and trees that are generally low in protein. As a result, high levels of production cannot be attained only from low quality feeds that hardly meet even the maintenance requirements of the animals. It has been reported that intake and digestibility of low quality hay was improved by supplementing with concentrates [1]. However, supplementation with concentrate is limited under smallholder production systems due to unavailability and high cost. Moreover, economic constraints and competition between humans and monogastric animals for cereal grains limits prospects for usage of cereal grains as ruminant feed by small holder farmers. In order to alleviate the problems related with the lack of protein supplements, there is a need to search for alternative protein sources that farmers can produce easily on their own farms without involving extra cost. In recent years, there has been increased attention on alternative protein sources from forage trees and shrubs that can be fed to goats [2, 3 and 4]. It has been reported that the replacement of conventional concentrates by trees fodders has made it cheaper than the commercial concentrates [5]. Manaye et al., [4] observed that intake, digestibility and body weight gain of sheep were improved when a low-quality grass was supplemented with Sesbaia sesban tree leaves. Moringa is a potent protein source for ruminant production that is native to the sub-Himalayan tracts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan [6] and is distributed throughout the tropics. The leaves of this tree posses nutritious, therapeutic and prophylactic properties with crude proteins varying from 23 to 40% [5 and 7]. The leaves of the tree have high antioxidant capacity due to the presence of high quantity of polyphenols [6, 8 and 9]. It was reported that both phenolic and flavonoid compounds in Moringa leaves not only influence lipid oxidation potential, but may also influence the meat quality and fatty acid composition [6]. Therefore, the objective of the present experiment was to evaluate the effect of replacement of conventional concentrate with Moringa foliage on growth, nutrient utilization and carcass characteristics in Black Bengal goats.