Leucaena Leaf Meal for Poultry in Ghana

Why leucaena keeps turning up at the farm gate

Leucaena is a fast-growing tree, and in many parts of Ghana it is planted for shade, fodder, firewood and to hold soil on slopes. It keeps its leaves through a long dry season and sprouts back quickly after cutting. A farmer with a row of it along the fence sees a free protein store standing there through the harmattan. That is why the question keeps coming up.

The leaf is genuinely rich. Published analyses of leucaena leaves often show crude protein somewhere around 20 to 30 per cent on a dry basis, together with a strong yellow pigment and a useful amount of minerals. Cattle and goats eat it in quantity in many places. Poultry are not ruminants, and that difference is the whole problem.

Our advice to farmers who ask is the same every time. The leaf is interesting, but a poultry ration should not be built on it.

Mimosine: the reason for the caution

Leucaena contains mimosine, a compound that resembles the amino acid tyrosine and can interfere with normal metabolism. In cattle, bacteria in the rumen break mimosine down into a substance that causes goitre and hair loss, which is why some livestock keepers in other countries manage leucaena with specific microbes or lower-mimosine varieties. Birds do not have those rumen bacteria. What happens in their gut is less well documented, and the effect depends on the dose, the variety and the rest of the ration.

What we can say with confidence is that poultry handle mimosine poorly. A bird that takes in too much tends to eat less and grow more slowly. There are reports of thyroid effects in some animals at higher levels, so a flock on heavy leaf meal is one to watch for weeks, not just a few days. Pods and seeds carry more mimosine than the leaves, so the rule is strict: leaves only.

What the leaf brings: protein and yellow colour

Set the mimosine question aside for a moment and leucaena looks useful. The protein is high for a leaf, the amino acid profile is better than many leaves offer, and the yellow carotenoids belong to the same family as the pigment in marigold meal. Yolk colour is the usual reason a layer farmer gets curious. Leaf meal can deepen yolks, but the effect varies with the amount fed and with the rest of the mash.

The leaf meals in the first three rows look similar on paper. They are not similar in risk, and a sack that shows a good protein figure tells you nothing about the mimosine or the cyanide in it.

Which part of the tree to use, and which to leave alone

• Young, green leaflets from healthy branches: the only part we would consider.
• Pods: leave them out. They carry more mimosine than the leaves and are a bad idea in any quantity.
• Seeds: never. Seed is the most concentrated form of the compound.
• Bark, stems and woody twigs: no value as feed, and a hazard in a mash.
• Leaves from a tree that has been sprayed, lopped beside a dusty road or left in a dust-blown yard: wash, check or skip.

A useful habit is to strip the leaflets by hand and inspect every handful. Pods get in with the leaves when cutting is rushed, so take the time.

Keep the leaf away from young birds while it is drying. Chicks and poults should be on a complete feed, and the drying tray should sit out of their reach.

Drying and grinding the leaves without making things worse

Leucaena leaves dry more easily than many leaves, but they can still sour if they are left in a heap. Lay them in a thin layer on clean mesh, out of the dust and away from livestock. Turn them every few hours. Dry them until they crumble in the hand and do not bend. Grind to a fine meal, sieve out the stems and store the meal sealed in a container.

Drying does not remove the mimosine. Think of drying as preserving the leaf and its protein, not detoxifying it. That is why the inclusion limits below matter whatever you do to the leaves, and why we would not take a shortcut on the processing and then raise the share.

Inclusion limits by stage

These figures are ceilings for well-dried leaf meal from a source you trust. They are a starting point for a conversation with your nutritionist, not a recipe to copy from a notebook.

If you have no test result for mimosine, treat every batch as high and begin at the lowest figure. A leaf you cannot measure is a leaf you cannot trust at a high share.

A worked example for a 400-bird layer house

Four hundred layers eat roughly 44 kilograms of mash a day at about 110 grams each. At 1 per cent leucaena leaf meal, that is 440 grams a day. At the 3 per cent ceiling it is about 1.3 kilograms a day, which comes to nearly 40 kilograms a month. That is a lot of leaf to dry, and most farmers find the labour is the limit long before the nutrition is.

Weigh the cost of the drying and the risk together. A cheap leaf you cannot test is not cheap if it takes the flock off lay for a month. Start at the bottom of the range, weigh the feed you actually put out, and record the egg count for every day of the trial.

Keep the sums simple on the wall. Feed in, feed left, eggs out. If the left-over feed grows while the eggs drop, the leaf meal is the first thing to take out.

Signs the birds are telling you to stop

Birds do not complain in words. They change their behaviour, and the change shows up in the feed bin before it shows up in the record book.

• Feed left in the trough, especially the leafy part of the mash.
• Growth that falls behind the weekly weight or the breed standard.
• Egg weight falling, or shells getting thinner over a week or two.
• Rough, dull or patchy feathers, or feathers that look poorer than they did.
• Lethargy, reduced activity, or birds standing hunched in the morning.

If you see any of these, remove the leaf meal from the mash first, then call your vet. Do not wait to see whether the flock recovers on its own. Taking the leaf out is cheap, and it is much easier to reverse early than late.

The mistakes we see with leucaena

• Cutting whole branches with the pods still on, then blending the lot into the mash.
• Assuming that because goats eat it happily, poultry will too.
• Adding it to chick starter because the protein looks good on paper.
• Drying leaves from a tree beside a road or in a dust-blown yard.
• Judging the trial in a single week, when the warning signs take three or four weeks to show.

When we would leave leucaena out completely

We would leave it out for chicks, breeders and any flock already struggling with feed intake, growth or disease. We would also leave it out if the leaf comes from an unknown source, if the tree has been sprayed, or if you cannot reliably separate leaves from pods. In those cases a protein you already understand is the safer choice. Soya, fishmeal and a good quality groundnut cake all give a predictable amino acid profile, and their risks are better known.

If you do keep leucaena, label the drying tray, keep a record of the batch and the date the leaves were cut, and never mix the meal into a bag of feed you have not already weighed. The record is what lets you answer the question, months later, of what the flock was eating when the eggs dropped.

A checklist before you feed leucaena leaf meal

• The meal is made from leaves only, with pods and seeds removed by hand.
• You know the tree variety, or the seller can tell you whether it is a low-mimosine line.
• The meal has been dried until brittle and is stored sealed and dry.
• The flock is past the starter stage and on a complete base feed.
• Begin at or under the stage figure shown in the table above.
• You are logging feed intake, weights or egg counts from the first day.
• Your vet knows what you are feeding and why.

What a hatchery can and cannot do for your feed plan

We are a day-old chick hatchery in Opeikuma, Kasoa, so we do not sell leaf meal, and we would not tell you what to put in your mash. What we can do is make sure you start with a strain that suits your plan. For a layer system built on a tested mash, our layer chicks are the place to start. For a meat-bird programme where protein and growth are watched closely, our broiler chicks are the usual choice. You can compare the two on our breeds page.

Chicks leave the day they hatch in ventilated boxes of 50, and we deliver to all 16 regions with the delivery cost confirmed before payment. See our delivery information, or learn more about how we work on our about page. To order, use the order form or WhatsApp +233 24 915 1503.

Once the chicks are in the brooder, the feed question moves to the mash. Our guide to feed formulation basics shows how a protein source fits into the whole ration, and how cassava leaf meal and moringa leaf meal compare with it.

Questions farmers ask