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Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

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RAHMANN G & GODINHO D (Ed.) (2012): <strong>Tackling</strong> <strong>the</strong> Future Challenges <strong>of</strong> <strong>Organic</strong> <strong>Animal</strong> <strong>Husbandry</strong>.<br />

Proceedings <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 2 nd OAHC, Hamburg/Trenthorst, Germany, Sep 12-14, 2012<br />

Effects <strong>of</strong> animal manure and harvest interval on <strong>the</strong> growth, dry matter yield<br />

and nutritive quality <strong>of</strong> three grasses at Abeokuta, Southwest Nigeria<br />

Abstract<br />

OLANITE JIMOH ALAO, DELE PETER ANIWE AND<br />

ARIGBEDE OLUWASANMI MOSES<br />

Department <strong>of</strong> Pasture and Range Management,<br />

College <strong>of</strong> <strong>Animal</strong> Science and Livestock Production,<br />

Federal University <strong>of</strong> Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria, jimolanite@yahoo.com<br />

A field experiment was conducted at <strong>the</strong> <strong>Organic</strong> Research Site, University <strong>of</strong> Agriculture Abeokuta,<br />

Nigeria between June 2010 and October 2011 to evaluate <strong>the</strong> effects <strong>of</strong> animal manure and harvest<br />

interval on <strong>the</strong> growth, dry matter yield and nutritive quality <strong>of</strong> three forage grasses. The experiment<br />

was a split-split-plot design with four animal manures namely: cattle, small ruminant, swine,<br />

poultry and control (no manure) as main plot; three grasses (Panicum maximum (Local), P. maximum<br />

(Ntchisi) and Pennisetum purpureum (Napier)) as sub-plot and four harvesting intervals (4, 8,<br />

12 and 16 weeks) as sub-sub-plot. The grasses were evaluated for growth, proximate, fibre and<br />

mineral composition. The main effects <strong>of</strong> manure, harvest interval and species were significant for<br />

all <strong>the</strong> parameters evaluated. Dry matter (DM) yield was lowest (P

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