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The study assessed the contributions of stakeholders to livestock development through provision of infrastructure to rural areas of Delta State, Nigeria. The objectives were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of respondents, appraise the role of external stakeholders in livestock development, verify any existing relationship between livestock development and rural development indicators and identify the challenges faced by respondents. A purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the three major towns and 180 respondents. Data were collected by questionnaire and subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Result obtained showed that majority of the respondents were males (68.3%) with higher national diplomat (HND)/First degree (33.3%) and have a mean age of 42 years. The first four highest external stakeholders were skills training and entrepreneurship programme (94%), youth agricultural entrepreneurs programme (90.6%), job creation agency (89.4%) and FADAMA (80.0%) that promoted livestock development. A significant relationship was observed based on infrastructural contributions to livestock development (p < 0.05) among the variables: market, water project, market and roads. Serious challenges included high cost of feed facilities (mean = 3.69) and insufficient power supply (mean = 3.49). The study concluded that the more available the rural infrastructure intervention, the more developed the livestock sector. The study recommended that stakeholders should make their extension agent available to livestock farmers.

Abstract-

A twelve (12) weeks feeding trial on nine hundred and sixty (960) African giant land snails (Archachatina marginata ) fed various leaves was evaluated. The snails were allotted randomly on their experimental diets. The experimental diets were domestic wastes designated as the control (T1), Centrosema pubescence leaves (T2), Moringa oleifera leaves (T3), and sweet potato leaves as (T4). Each treatment had two hundred and forty snails and was replicated four times with sixty snails each per replicate. The proximate compositions of these leaves were analyzed and showed significant values on the moisture content, crude protein, ether extracts, crude fiber, ash, and Nitrogen free extracts respectively. Data were collected on the performance, carcass characteristics, nutrient digestibility, proximate composition and minerals contents of snail meat. The results on the final weight, weight gain, average weight gain and FCR of snails showed that T4 (121.46, 36.10, 0.52g and 1.49­­ ) were significantly (p &lt;0.05) different across treatment groups. Results on carcass characteristics showed that T4 had superior live weight, dressed weight, foot and dressing percentage values compared to the other groups. Also, T4 revealed significantly (p&lt;0.05) different across the diets on nutrient digestibility, proximate compositions of snail meat and the mineral composition of the snail meat compared to the other treatments. The study concluded that T4 (sweet potato leaves) significantly influences the performance, carcass characteristic and mineral compositions of the snail meat and should be recommended as snail diet for optimum performance at an affordable cost.