Twenty West African dwarf (WAD) rams with average body weight of 12.43 ± 0.5 kg were used for the experiment that lasted 84 days to investigate the effects of supplementing herbaceous forage legume pellets on weight change and blood profile of animals fed Panicum maximum basal diet. Sole Panicum maximum served as the control diet and three other experimental diets were P. maximum supplemented with Lablab purpureus pellets, P. maximum supplemented with Calopogonium mucunoides pellets and P. maximum supplemented with Mucuna pruriens pellets constituted the four treatments which were arranged in a completely randomised design. The rams were divided into four groups of five animals each and were balanced for variation in live weight before they were assigned the experimental diets. Panicum maximum was offered to the animals ad libitum and legume pellets were supplemented. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed in weight gain of the rams. Those fed the control diet had the lowest value of 41.88 g/day while rams supplemented L. purpureus pellets had the highest value (83.66 g/ day). Haematological parameters, leucocyte values and serum biochemical indices of WAD rams were significantly (P < 0.05) different across the dietary treatments at the final stage of the trial. The values for red blood cells, haemoglobin concentration, packed cell volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin decreased slightly in rams supplemented with M. pruriens pellets. Reduction of serum biochemical parameters was also noticed in rams supplemented with M. pruriens pellets. It can be concluded that L. purpureus pellets ranked the best among the herbaceous legume pellets as supplemental feed for West African dwarf sheep resulting in higher weight gain and better feed conversion efficiency with no deleterious effect on blood profile.

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Dry matter yield of herbaceous legumes and effects of storage length of their pellets on the chemical composition were investigated. A two phased field and laboratory experiment were conducted. In the first experiment, the yield of the forage legumes using a 5 x 2 factorial experiment consisting of five herbaceous legumes (Lablab purpureus, Mucuna pruriens, Centrosema molle, Centrosema pascorum and Calopogonium mucunoides) and two harvesting ages (6 and 12 weeks after sowing) laid out in a split-plot design was determined. The second experiment was the selection of herbaceous legumes with higher yields from Experiment 1 using a 3 x 4 factorial experiment consisting of the three herbaceous legumes (L. purpureus, C. mucunoides and M. pruriens) used to make pellets and four storage lengths (0 i.e. fresh, 30, 60 and 90 days). Treatments in both experiments were replicated three times. Results showed that legumes harvested 12 weeks after sowing (WAS) had significantly (P < 0.05) higher dry matter yield (2.73 t ha-1) than legumes at 6 WAS, while Lablab purpureus1 produced the highest (P < 0.05) dry matter yield (2.94 t ha ) of the legumes evaluated.. The physical characteristics of the herbaceous legumes pellets such as colour, odour and moldiness at different storage length showed that they were between fair and good pellets. The L. purpureus and M. pruriens had higher (P < 0.05) CP content than C. mucunoides. Differences in the CP content of pellets with the storage lengths employed was not significant (P > 0.05). Higher oxalate, phytate and saponin contents were found in mucunoides pellets than in other legumes pellets while the tannin content was in the order of M. pruriens (43.63 mg kg-1) > L. purpureus (26.00 mg kg-1) > C. mucunoides (20.31 mg kg-1). In conclusion, increasing age at harvest increased the yield of the legumes, while increasing storage duration decreased the CP content but increased the NDF, ADF and saponin content of the pellets.

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