Carcass and nutrient analysis of wild and domesticated grasscutters

Abstract

Wild grasscutter meat is a delicacy food, highly preferred by the age people, because of its low cholesterol content. However, capturing, domesticated and marketing may have hindered its consumption. Domesticating such animals to have readily available lean meat products in the market is the focus of this study. Twenty male grasscutter (ten Wild and ten domesticated grasscutter) were reared for 8 weeks, fed compounded feed. They were replicated five times, slaughtered after 8 weeks and their carcasses, organs and nutrients composition were evaluated in a completely randomised design. Results showed that, the carcass evaluated for wild grasscutter were highly significant (P<0.05) than domesticated grasscutter, in dressed, blood loss, lung, heart, liver, spleen, kidney, and intestinal weight but were not (P>0.05) in bled weight, tail length and dressing percentage. The wild grasscutter had highest nutrients content in moisture 68.9 ± 0.99 and protein 20.2 ± 0.94 significantly (P<0.05) than 55.1 ± 0.99 moisture and 21.9 ± 0.94 for domesticated grasscutter and lower ash and ether extracts content than the domesticated grasscutter. Nutrients content increased more than twice the raw equivalent significantly (P<0.05) when boiled. There were no significant (P>0.05) differences. The wild grasscutter performed best in parameters evaluated than the domesticated grasscutter.