Effect of physical pretreatment of oil palm frond on parasite infestation and blood metabolite profile in boer goats

Oil palm frond (OPF) was widely used as ruminant feed. Local farmers especially those who are in palm oil plantation collected this by-product and fed the animals without pretreating the OPF.Since the crude fibre content of OPF is a bit high, it has lower digestibility to the ruminant. This contributes to the lower feed intake and reduce the animal health status. Hence, this study aimsto evaluate the effect of physical pretreatment of OPF on parasite infestation and blood metabolites. For animal feed trial, twelve goats (12) were separated into three groups; Control Group (CG) fed with napier grass and commercial pellet only, Treatment 1 (T1) and Treatment 2 (T2) fed with napier grass, commercial pellet with freshly chopped OPF and physically pretreated OPF respectively. The blood samples were collected around 4 ml for serum and hematology blood tube.The serum samples were centrifuged at 3 000 rmp at 25 celcius for 15 minutes. Meanwhile,faecal samples were collected through the rectum for McMaster test procedure. Based on hematology analysis,there was no significant difference in all hematology parameters except for Mean Corpuscular Volume and Hematocrit (P<0.05) in T2. For fecal egg count data, T2 shows the decrease of egg counts after the feeding trial. Hence, the pressed OPF diet was a suitable feed diet that improves all parameters level of blood metabolite.