Infant formula is a synthetic version of mother’s milk and belongs to a class of food materials known as dairy substitutes. This study was designed to evaluate the proximate composition of some selected infant formula sold in Makurdi metropolis. Six (6) different brands of infant formula samples were purchased from the major markets, Wadata market and North bank market Makurdi Benue State, North Central Nigeria. The six different brands comprise of three (3) infant milk formulae and three (3) infant cereal formulae. Samples on some Selected Infant Formulae were analysed in the laboratory for proximate composition and the data were subjected to Analysis of Variance to rank the significant differences in means. There were significantly different (P<0.05) across the selected infant formulae sample for moisture, ash, crude protein, crude fate, crude fibre and carbohydrates. The result shows that FRISOGOLD significantly (P<0.05) has the highest moisture content (11.60%) with cowbell having the lowest (2.45%) while the ash content of cowbell was found to be the highest compared to other formulae. In conclusion, the commercial baby food samples (MYBOY, NAN and cowbell) have a low moisture content which suggests an asset as this prolongs the shelf life and also inhibits microbial activity on these products thereby preventing spoilage.

Nonlinear functions of body weight at different age intervals were used to estimate the growth pattern in New Zealand White and California rabbits. Gompertz and Logistic functions of 3 and 4 parameters were fitted to Age-weight data matrix. Age-weight records of New Zealand White and California rabbits from birth were monitored to 56 days to estimate the average growth curve for Obioma et al.; AJRAF, 5(2): 22-28, 2020; Article no.AJRAF.54482 23 each breed. The weight difference between breeds was consistently in favor of California rabbits as compared to New Zealand White. It was concluded that the Gompertz and logistic models were both parsimonious and adequate in describing the growth patterns of New Zealand White and California rabbits in the tropical conditions of Nigeria. Original Research Article

The present study was designed to develop the prediction equations for 305 days fat corrected milk yield on the basis of part periods milk yield, milk component and conformation traits of multigenotype cows. Artificial Neural Network model had the best prediction accuracy across varying environments, though Genetic Function Algorithm had the overall best adequacy for fat corrected milk yield predictions (FCM305d=1036.1-98.3RP+22FY+15.92UC-0.07RUH; Adj R 2 =0.997; RMSE=30.07; BIC=1997.28).

This study investigated the effects of different processing methods of Delonix regia seeds on amino acids composition of experimental diets. Ten isonitrogenous diets (40% crude protein) were formulated with cooked, raw and fermented Delonix regia seeds at 0% (Control), 10%, 20% and 30% inclusion levels respectively. Data were analysed using Analysis of Variance, significant differences in means were separated using Duncan Multiple Range Test. All the essential amino acids (lysine, arginine, threonine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine and phenylalanine) differs significantly among the treatments except histidine which was statistically similar (P > 0.05) across the dietary treatments. The activity of essential and non- essential amino acid concentration was higher in cooked than the fermented and raw Delonix regia seeds. It was concluded that cooked Delonix regia seeds at 10% inclusion levels had the highest activities of essential and non-essential amino acids and could be used to supplement conventional feedstuff for livestock especially in fish nutrition and bioenergetics.

Genetic parameters for milk and health related traits in low and high milk producing Holstein Friesian cows were estimated using farm collected information on the Jos, Plateau, Nigeria. Milk yield and health related records were extracted from database of the West Africa Milk Company Integrated Dairies Limited. An innovative statistical modeling in this study was the application of repeatability animal models to estimate the genetic parameters. The resulting dataset consisted of 5043 lactations from 608 dams and 39 sires. Genetic correlations were obtained by bivariate analyses of all pair-wise combinations between two traits. In high milk yield Holstein, heritabilities estimate recorded for milk yield (0.43), mastitis (0.26) and lameness (0.33) was high while NIS (0.56), PR (0.22), RR (0.67) and PR (0.22) recorded high estimate in low milk yield Holstein cows. Highest genetic correlation was observed between rectal temperature and vaginal temperature (0.91). Lameness had significant (p<0.05), positive and highest environmental correlation with mastitis (0.95). The heritability estimates of health related traits were low to high; therefore, genetic gain through direct selection alone would be slow, yet still positive and cumulative in the divergently classified Holstein Friesian cows on the Plateau.