Cocoa Waste As Alternative Feed

Feed is one of the main factors influencing the success of livestock business. The availability of animal feed ingredients lately feels increasingly limited. This is due to the shrinking of land for the development of forage production. Therefore, it is necessary to find alternative animal feed ingredients that are able to replace some or all of the forage.

Cocoa is a crop plantations, where the cacao yield 71% cacao skin waste (Siregar et al., 1992), low nutrient content ie 5-8% protein, 19-40% crude fiber and 31.1% dry matter. As animal feed ingredients, cocoa pods have some disadvantages including lack of palatables and low nutritional value and contain anti-nutrient substances such as theobromine alkaloids (3,7-dimethylxanthine) of 1,00% of dry matter and tannin (Ginting, 2004). Besides containing theobromine alkaloids and tannin skin cocoa fruit also contains phytic acid which can cause diarrhea in livestock. The high content of phytic acid can also reduce the intestinal ability of ruminants (cattle, goats and buffalo) to absorb food substances (Anon, 2008).

Based on the report of the analysis of several researchers: the nutritional content of cocoa pods 88%, crude protein (PK) 8.0%, crude fiber (SK) 40.1% and TDN 50.8% (Anon, 2001 ), while Suharto (2004) obtained crude protein 9.15%; fat 1.25%; crude fiber 32.7% and TDN 50.3%. Furthermore Bahar (2006) reported crude protein 6.06%, fat 0.42%, crude fiber 41.32%, ash 8.63%, Ca 0.68% and P 0.11%. Mariani and Putri (2017) reported the nutrient content of fermented cocoa peel for five days, namely BK 95.48%; PK 5.21%; ash 0.30%; LK 8.25%; SK 29.90% and GE 3.3396 kcal / g.

The availability of cocoa pods in the harvest season is very much, if used as animal feed, processing needs to be carried out, with the aim to increase the value of nutrients, digestibility, reduce the negative effects of antinutrient compounds, and can extend their shelf life. The response of cocoa pods to ruminants was reported to be varied which was influenced by the magnitude of the proportion in the ration, the form of feeding, the method of processing and the type of livestock. In the integration system of cacao-goats in Lampung Province shows that the provision of fresh cacao skins chopped as much as 2-3 kg / day to adult goats can save labor for providing forage by 50% (Priyanto et al., 2004). According to Zain (2009) replacement of field grass with amoniated cocoa pod skin as much as 100%, resulting in sheep body weight gain that is equal to the provision of field grass. The use of cocoa pods without fermentation or fermented with mold Phanerochaete chrysosporiun as a substitute for elephant grass has no effect on the consumption of dry matter, organic matter and weight gain of goats (Murni et al., 2012).

The use of cocoa pods as feed is expected to be used as a feed stock and to overcome the shortage of forage feed, especially in the dry season and can increase the development of ruminant livestock populations, especially in cocoa plantation centers.