Legume forages from pigeon pea, leucaena and sesbania as supplements to natural pastures for goat production in western Tanzania

In two dry and two wet seasons forage of pigeon pea, leucaena and sesbania were fed to growing goats as supplements to natural grazing over a two year period. The supplemented goats gained live-weights faster (P < 0.05) than the control animals. Intakes of pigeon pea (63.1 to 91.4 g/head/day) and leucaena (52.6 to 93.8 g/head/day) were consistently higher (P < 0.05) than that of sesbania (49.7 to 83.4 g/head/day) and this was reflected in liveweight gains in both wet and dry season. Liveweight gains ranged from 25.5 to 43.2, 16.7 to 37.5, 14.4 to 28.3 and 6.7 to 21.6 g/head/day for goats supplemented with pigeon pea, leucaena, sesbania and the control animals respectively. Preliminary cost-benefit analysis of the results indicate that such interventions are likely to be economically attractive and the responses provide a basis for improvement of goat production in the Tabora agro-pastoral systems. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.