An Overview of Disease and Health Research Vol. 12

Shortage of animal product supply owing to absence of protein sources, regular increase in cost of feed ingredients, and climate change has affected developing countries like Nigeria. This study explores the potential of donkeys’ blood meal (DBM), donkeys’ caecal meal (DCM) and donkeys’ blood-caecal meal (DBCM) as animal protein feed ingredients to increase the amount of feed offered to animals, improve animal products, and therefore improve animal nutrient scarcity in order to address malnutrition in Nigeria. The parameters examined were the proximate composition of the three test ingredients, essential amino acid profiles and non-essential amino acids of the test ingredients. The results of the proximate composition of the test ingredients showed that the values of crude protein ranged from 78.09% DBM to 26.57% DBCM and DCM 19.42% respectively. The results revealed that DBM is the best test ingredient as an alternative animal protein source. Fibre fraction indicated that DBM has the least value of 0.00%, followed by DBCM 6.01%, but DCM had the highest value of 7.00% crude fibre. Macro and micro minerals showed that DCM has the highest value of nitrogen free extract, Gross Energy followed by DBCM and DBM, making it a superior test ingredient. Essential and non-essential amino acids revealed that DBM had the highest values, followed by DBCM and DCM among the test ingredients.  This study evaluates the three feed ingredients, namely: DBM, DBCM and DCM, as an approach to overcome hunger and enhance nutrient shortage and malnutrition recommended that DBM be the best possible protein feed source, that has 78.09 crude protein.