Effect of changes in the nutritional status on the performances of growing Creole kids during an established nematode parasite infection

• Published in: Tropical animal health and production Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 765 - 770
• Main Authors: Ceï, W., Archimède, H., Arquet, R., Félicité, Y., Feuillet, D., Nepos, A., Mulciba, P., Etienne, T., Alexandre, G., Bambou, J. C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-04-2017; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag (Germany)
• Subjects: Animal Feed - analysis; Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; Animals; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Diet; Dietary Supplements; Digestion; Dry matter; Feces - parasitology; Feeding Behavior; Goat Diseases - parasitology; Goats - growth & development; Goats - parasitology; Haemonchus - physiology; Host-Parasite Interactions; Life Sciences; Nematoda; Nematode Infections - physiopathology; Nutritional Status; Nutritive value; Parasite Egg Count; Parasites; Regular Articles; Trichostrongylus - physiology; Veterinary Medicine/Veterinary Science; Zoology; Small ruminant; Infection; Parasitism; Nutrition; Growth performance; infection; Agroécologie; race creole; parasitism; performance de croissance; small ruminant; infection intestinale; Agroecology; livestock farms; production animale; growth performance; nutrition; nutrition des animaux; petit ruminant; parasitisme
• ISSN: 0049-4747; 1573-7438
• DOI: 10.1007/s11250-017-1258-z

In this study, we evaluated the effect of changes in the nutritional status on the performances of growing Creole kids during an established experimental gastrointestinal nematode (GIN) infection. Eighteen 6-month-old Creole kids were distributed in two main groups infected (I) and non-infected (NI) and were placed for a period of 4 weeks on each of three diets differing in their nutritional values: (1) fresh grass (FG, 6.7 MJ/kg dry matter (DM) and 7.9% crude protein (CP)) non-supplemented, (2) FG supplemented with a commercial concentrate (CC, 12.2 MJ/kg DM and 20.6% of CP), and (3) FG supplemented with dried banana (Ban, 11.1 MJ/kg DM and 4.3% CP). The experiment was designed as a split-plot with experimental infection (I and NI) as the main plot and the diets (FG, CC, and Ban) as the subplots with three replicates. We showed a significant effect of the diet changes on the fecal egg counts. A higher dry matter intake, digestibility, and growth rate were observed with the CC diet but together with a slight but significant increase of the intensity of the GIN infection. These data suggest that the improvement of the protein nutritional status during an establish GIN infection would improve the animal performance at the expense of the mechanism involved in the control of the infection.