Dried distillers grains with solubles or corn gluten feed has the ability to replace soybean meal in Boer-type growing goat diets

Abstract

There is a limited amount of research pertaining to the formulation of growing goat diets. This causes the producers to have limited understanding on what to feed their goats to achieve better performance while still being economical. This study was aimed to evaluate whether dried distillers’ grains with solubles (DDGS) or corn gluten feed (CGF) could replace soybean meal in Boer-type growing goat diets. A total of 75 Boer-type goats were used and randomly assigned to pens containing three head; the unit of measurement was on a per pen basis. Five pens were assigned to one of each treatment over a 35 d period. Treatments were 1) 100% CGF/0% DDGS, 2) 66% CGF/33% DDGS, 3) 33% CGF/66% DDGS, 4) 0% CGF/100% DDGS, and 5) soybean meal. The goats were approximately 70 d of age and weighed 26.9±0.2kg. Data were collected on a weekly basis and cost related data was calculated at the end of the trial. All data was analyzed by the GLIMMIX procedure of SAS (v.9.4, Cary, NC) with an acceptable alpha value of 0.05. There were no detected treatment differences for BW, ADG, ADFI, and G:F (P>0.05). The feed cost per kg of gain had a P-value of 0.049 meaning that there was a significant difference in this cost. Also, goats fed treatments with corn co-products resulted in less feed cost per goat than those fed soybean meal (P=0.0008). In summary, DDGS or CGF can replace soybean meal in Boer-type growing goat diets, due to being financially more economical.