The ability of herbaceous legumes to supply nitrogen to subsequent cereal crops could be harnessed to alleviate the difficulties in cereal production due to poor soil fertility and expensive inorganic fertilizers. Field experiments were carried out in Zaria, Nigeria to determine the soil improvement potential of Lablab purpureus accessions and evaluate the grain and fodder response of maize-cowpea intercrop to one-year fallow rotation. Six lablab accessions (ILRI 147, ILRI 4612, PI 388013, PI 183451, PI 195851 and PI 532170) of different maturity groups and natural vegetation represented the fallow treatments. The maize and cowpea test crops were TZE Comp.5 W and IT99K-241-2, respectively. Lablab fallow improved soil organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The early maturing PI 388013 increased phosphorus and potassium by 179 and 100 %, respectively whereas extremely late maturing PI 195851 increased nitrogen by 18 % while another early maturing accession PI 183451 increased organic carbon by 11 % relative to natural fallow. Lablab grain and fodder yields ranged from 0.6 to 1.4 t ha -1 and 2.4 to 3.9 t ha -1 , respectively. Compared to natural fallow, intercropping maize on plots previously planted to ILRI 4612 led to significantly higher fodder yield (2.8 to 4.1 t ha -1 ) meaning an increase of 46 %. Lablab or natural fallow did not influence grain yield and 500-seed-weight of maize; it did not also influence 100-seed-weight, grain and fodder yields of cowpea. The fallow period for lablab may not have been long enough for significant improvement of soil properties to impact maize and cowpea performance in relation to natural fallow. The study showed that a maize-cowpea intercrop following lablab in rotation can be of rational inclusion in the farming system of the zone.

The objective of the study was to ascertain the feed intake, acceptability of hay and weight gain by yankasa rams fed basal diets of either natural grass hay (NGH) as control, Digitaria exilis hay (DEH), Bracharia decumbens hay (BDH) or Digitaria decumbens hay (DDH) along with equal amounts of concentrate feed as supplement. The 10-week experiment was conducted at the College farm of the National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI), Vom, Plateau State, Nigeria using Completely Randomized Design. The four hays were allotted randomly to twenty rams housed in separate pens. There were five rams per treatment. Each animal was served 2 kg of the hay treatment, plus 200 g concentrate supplement. The parameters measured were feed intake (FI), water consumed (WC), hay acceptability (HA), weekly weight (WW), total weight gained (TWG) and daily weight gain (DWG) by rams. Hay treatment affected weekly weight of yankasa rams significantly. Daily weight gain was 142.9, 60.7, 42.9 and 10.7 g per day for rams fed with BDH, DDH, DEH and NRH, respectively. At week 10, rams fed with BDH were significantly heavier by 78.0 % than rams fed NGH and heavier by 33.2 % on aggregate than rams fed with DEH and DDH. Total weight gain of rams fed BDH was 809.1 % higher than TWG of animals fed with the control (NGH) treatment. Yankasa rams consumed 2.5 litres of water per head daily. The rams consumed significantly more of the natural grass hay (NGH) than the other hays. Acceptability of NGH, DEH and BDH was similar but DDH was not well accepted by rams. The great prospects of Bracharia decumbens hay for fattening yankasa rams, warrants expansion of this grass by NVRI.