Presentation by O. R. Madibela, S. Ramabu and J. Machete at the 5th All Africa conference on animal production, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 25-28 October 2010.

1. O. R. Madibela, S. Ramabu and J. Machete
Department of Animal Science & Production, Botswana College of Agriculture
October 25-28, 2010

2. Introduction
 Tswana goats has high frequency of twinning
 Combined with short gestation
 Means meat can be realised in relatively short period
 Constrain to production is nematode parasites
 Control reliant on anthelmintic drugs
 Resource-limited farmers do not afford these drugs

3.  The use of anthelmintics encourage drug resistance
 There is need to re-think control of nematode parasites
 Sustainable way is use of traditional medicinal plants
 Demonstrated that plants with condense tannins (CT)
reduce FEC (Butter et al 2000; Kabasa et al 2000)
 Aim: investigate effects of V. verrocosum diet on FEC and
LW

4. Material and Methods
 Vines of V. verrocosum
harvested and dried under
shade for 5 days
 Chopped before mixing
 15 naturally infected
female goats

5.  Blocked on Wt and initial
FEC
 Allocated into 3
treatments: LP; 7% CP, HP;
11.4 % CP and VV; 11.5% CP
 Oil cake & Urea replaced
with 66% plant in VV diet
 Fed at rate of 30g/kg LW
 FEC and LW measured
weekly

6.  Live weight & FEC data subjected to REML by SAS to
estimate repeated measures
 FEC was transformed using log 10 (FEC+1) to normalise
data
 Results reported as least means and accompanied by
upper 95% confidence limits.

7. Results and Discussion
 VV kept FEC at minimum ≈ 500
 Upper limits of VV were 4-10 times less than LP and HP
 FEC was reduced in first week by VV & may imply that
plant have direct effect
 Reduction in FEC has potential to keep nematode on
pasture at low levels

8. Figure 1: Effects of diet containing VV on FEC of female Tswana goats
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
0 17 24 34 39 45 52 59 67
Time from introduction of diets (days)
FEC
(epg)
HP
LP
VV

9.  Strategic feeding when epidimiology of parasites is high
 Periparturient period for ewes/does and growing
lambs/kids
 Live weight was not affected and this is accordance with
previous research
 CT may have detrimental effects on growth by affecting
diet digestibility
 However, there was a trend for high LW for VV-fed
animals

10. Figure 2: Effects of diet containing VV on live weights of female
Tswana goats
10.00
15.00
20.00
25.00
30.00
0 17 24 32 39 45 52 59 67
Time from introduction of diets (days)
Live
weights
(kg)
HP
LP
VV

11. Conclusions
 Diet containing VV reduced FEC and kept low
 Upper limits of FEC for VV fed goats was lower that those
fed either LP or HP
 Strategic feeding would help keep pasture clean of
parasites
 Live weight was not affected though VV-fed goats tended
to be heavy

12. Acknowledgements
 The authors would like to thank Desmond Tutu
Education Trust for funding this study
 Mr L. Malela for helping with faecal sampling, Ms J.
Mokelwane and Mr M. Mokhudu for looking after the
animals.
 Botswana College of Agriculture for availing funds to
attend this conference