Comparative nutritive value of cassava leaf meal, soya beans, fish meal and casein in diets for growing pigs

A trial was conducted to investigate energy and nutrient digestibility of cassava leaf meal (CLM), casein (CAS), fish meal (FM), full-fat soya bean (FFSB) and extracted soya bean meal (SBM). The basal diet containing cassava root meal (CRM) and FFSB meal and the other five dietary treatments were evaluated with 12 crossbred castrated male pigs in a metabolism study covering three successive experimental periods between 40 and 60 kg body weight (BW). Total tract digestibility of dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and gross energy (GE) of diets, generally increased significantly (p < 0.05) from CLM diet to FFSB and FM diets and finally to CAS and SBM diets, corresponding to a decrease in fibre content in the diets. Except for CAS diets, the pattern of acid detergent fibre (ADF) digestibility followed a similar trend. Significantly higher ADF digestibility was recorded for soya bean diets while ADF digestibility value obtained for CLM diet was significantly lower. The digestible energy values obtained for CAS, FM, FFSB, SBM and CLM were 22.2, 16.3, 17.5, 17.0 and 8.0 MJ/kg DM, respectively. Corresponding metabolizable energy values were 22.1, 15.6, 17.1, 16.3 and 7.6 MJ/kg DM, respectively,