CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Ruminant livestock have a unique digestive system that allows them to use energy from fibrous plants materials better than other herbivores. Their digestive system is designed to ferment feedstuffs and provide precursors for energy for the animal to use (Parish et al., 2009). Forages play an important role in ruminant animal nutrition. Ruminants are able to ruminate or regurgitate ingested high forage diets to reduce particle size for improving their digestibility (Ranjbar, 2007; Parish et al., 2009). However, inadequate supply of all year round quality forage is a major constraint to livestock production in the tropics (Ajayi et al., 2005; Ogunbosoye and Babayemi, 2010a). Most available ruminant feeds/feedstuffs during the dry season are poor in nutrients which deteriorate rapidly with increasing fibre and decreasing protein (Babayemi, 2007).
Sources of cheaper alternative forages of high quality for ruminants have been a subject of research in recent years (Alan et al., 2013) especially for farmers in the tropics. Browse plants have great potential as source of high quality nutrient for ruminants, being high in protein, minerals and vitamins (Babayemi et al., 2003). They are available all year round because of their drought resistance, persistence, vigorous growth, re-growth and palatability
(Reynolds and Atta-Krah, 2006).