There has been an unprecedented increase in global animal production, especially in subtropical and tropical areas in the last two decades (Renaudeau et al., 2012). The increase in the demand for food is due to a rise in human population (Godfray et al., 2010). Due to its potential role to provide food and livelihood securities (Paswan et al., 2014), poultry production, especially broiler production, are expected to meet the critical shortage in animal protein needed by Africa (Hatab et al., 2019).There has been growing concerns on the impacts of climate change on livestock production. For example, in West Africa, the expected increase in average temperature by 2°C-6°C by the year 2100 (Sylla et al., 2016) portends a serious challenge to sustainable broiler production. Due to the climatic challenge, heat stress events are expected to become more frequent in livestock species (Rahimi et al., 2020). A study by Tawfeek et al. (2014) showed that high ambient temperature adversely affected the performance of broiler chickens under high ambient temperature. However, the authors indicated that supplementation of antioxidants ameliorated the effects of thermal stress on the birds. Therefore, the diets of the birds are required to be adjusted to the climatic conditions (Attia & Hassan, 2017;Nir, 1992;Suganya et al., 2015) and also to the prevailing economic status of the countries where they are produced.The fast rate of development of the poultry production in tropical countries has also engendered a situation of overdependence on
Feed shortage during the dry season in the highlands of Madagascar negatively impacts the dairy cattle productivity, as well as the farmers’ income. Bamboo can produce a high quantity of biomass and could be an alternative way to increase the fodder supply for cattle. The present study aimed to assess the compositional information and the optimal rate of bamboo as fodder for dairy cattle. Leaf samples from nine bamboo species were collected to determine their chemical composition and nutritive value. A feeding experiment was also conducted using ten dairy cows, over ten weeks. Bamboo leaves were mixed with maize silage in five proportions: SIL0:BAM100, SIL25:BAM75, SIL50:BAM50, SIL75:BAM25 and SIL100:BAM0. The contents of dry matter, total ash and crude protein in the bamboo leaves were, respectively, 44.5-64.6 %, 6.68-18.5 % and 7.71-15.4 %. In the feeding trial, the dry matter intake of bamboo leaves was 1.6-7.1 kg per day, with an average of 4.8 kg per day. The dry matter apparent digestibility of bamboo leaves was 37.4-56.4 %. The milk production reached 13.6-14.4 L per cow, per day, but there was no significant difference concerning the rate of bamboo leaves in the mixed diet (p > 0.05). The introduction of bamboo leaves into the ruminants diet did not affect their milk production.
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