Cassava By-Products for Animal Feeding

Cassava Plantation

Cassava chips

This is the most common form in which dried cassava roots are marketed and most exporting countries produce them. The chips are dried irregular slices of roots, which vary in size but should not exceed 5 cm in length so that they can be stored in silos.

Production of Cassava Chips

They are produced extensively in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and some parts of Africa. The present method of processing chips is very simple, consisting of peeling, washing, chipping the cassava roots, and then sun drying the slices or chips.

The recovery rate of chips from roots is about 20-40% depending on the initial dry-matter content of the cassava roots and the final moisture of the chips.

General specifications for cassava chips, flour, starch, and pellets are presented in Table1 while specifications for chips intended for export to the European Community for use in livestock feeds is in Table 2.

Gari
Fufu flour
High quality cassava flour
Tapioca
Lafun
Kpokpogari
Glucose syrup
Glue
Ethanol
Composite bread
Livestock feed industry
Livestock feed products
Starch in paper, etc.
Starch in food
Starch production


Chips should be white or near white in color, free from extraneous matter, molds, insect infestation and damage, and possess no peculiar odors. In addition, shipments of chips must not contain significant amounts of dust, as this is considered unacceptable by European importers.

Broken roots
Similar to chips in appearance, but generally thicker and longer, they are often 12-15 cm long and can jam the mechanism of handling equipment. They are produced mainly in Africa where local processors prefer to produce longer roots because of the domestic demand mainly for products suitable for human consumption, as cassava is part of the staple diet. Once processed into chips, the product becomes inedible and the producer wants to conserve the local market.

Pellets

Production of Cassava Pellet

Pellets are obtained from dried and broken roots by grinding and hardening into a cylindrical shape. The cylinders are about 2-3 cm long and about 0.4-0.8 cm in diameter and are uniform in appearance and texture.

Pellets are produced by feeding dried cassava chips into the pelleting machine, followed by screening and bagging for export. Powdered chips which fall down during pelleting are re-pressed into pellets and the process repeated.















There is usually about 2-3% loss of weight during the process. Pellets have the following advantages over chips: quality is more uniform; they occupy 25-30% less space than chips, thus reducing the cost of transport and storage; handling charges for loading and unloading are also cheaper; they usually reach their destination sound and undamaged, while a great part of a cargo of sliced chips is damaged in long-distance shipment because of sweating and heating.

An indigenous fabricator in Nigeria, B & T Ventures, Ibadan, in collaboration with the cassava project at IITA, has been able to design and fabricate a pelleting machine that can produce three different types of cassava pellets: hard, soft, and floating. The floating pellets are used for feeding fish, the hard ones are for poultry and the soft ones for ruminants.

Cassava meal
This is the powdered residue of the chips and roots after processing to extract edible starch. It is generally inferior in quality to chips, pellets, and broken roots, has lower starch content, and usually contains more sand. The use of cassava meal in the European Economic Community has declined with a shift to the other cassava products during the last few years. However, there will remain some demand for this product, especially by small-scale farmers who produce their own feedstuffs. Since it does not require grinding, it can be readily mixed with other ingredients.

Cassava residual pulp
During the processing of cassava starch, the residual pulp separated in the screening process is also used as an animal feed. It is usually utilized in the wet state (75-80% moisture content) in the neighborhood of the processing factory but is sometimes sun dried before it is sold. This product is considered a by-product of the cassava starch industry and represents about 10% by weight of the cassava roots.

Livestock feed formulations with cassava

Dried cassava roots and leaves in a ratio of 4 to 1 can replace maize in poultry feed and reduce feed costs without a loss in weight gain or egg production
A mixture of 82 parts cassava flour and 18 parts whole soybean makes a product similar to those of cereals (Tables 3-5).

Cassava flour can be complemented with a large number of ingredients that provide the nutrients needed to obtain balanced food rations for poultry. Soybean (full fat) is presented as a very special and synergetic resource in the design of programs with high nutritional quality. The lack of protein and essential fatty acids that characterize the cassava flour can be amply satisfied with the use of soybean. Indeed, a balanced mixture of cassava flour and whole soybean can totally meet the requirements of energy, protein, and essential fatty acids for broilers and layers.

The specific nutritional requirements for broiler and layer diets offer favorable conditions to be satisfied by different mixtures of cassava flour and whole soybean. Likewise, this complementary function simplifies the design of feeding programs under commercial conditions. The soybean can be processed by extrusion or toasting methods. Evaluations conducted using both products have shown similar results.

Cassava feeds for livestock other than poultry

Several trials using cassava on cattle, sheep, goat and pigs are reported in Hahn et al. (1992) and recently by Tewe (2003)