GROWTH RESPONSE, HAEMATOLOGY AND CARCASS COMPOSITION OF Clarias gariepinus FINGERLINGS FED DIETS WITH Afzelia africana SEED MEAL

Abstract

A 56 – day feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect of replacing the dietary soybean meal with Afzelia
africana seed meal (AAM) on the growth performance, carcass composition and some haematological indices of C.
gariepinus fingerlings. Five iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric diets were formulated with AAM replacing 0, 10, 20, 40
and 60% component of soybean meal (SBM) in the diets. The results revealed that, there were significant (p < 0.05)
differences in body weight gain, specific growth rate (SGR), relative growth rate (RGR) and food conversion ratio
(FCR) among the treatments with 0%AAM having the best performance. Significant (p < 0.05) differences were
recorded in carcass parameters of fishes at the end of the feeding trial, with fishes fed 0 and 10% AAM diets having
higher values. Among the haematological indices, except white blood cell (WBC) that increased significantly (p <
0.05), all other parameters like packed cell volume (PCV), haemoglobin concentration (Hb) and red blood cell
(RBC) significantly (p < 0.05) decreased with increase in AAM in the diets. It was concluded that SBM protein in
the diets for C. gariepinus can be replaced with 10% AAM protein without adverse effect on growth performance,
carcass characteristics and haematological indices.