By Joshua Kato
Banana peels constitute about 30% of the total weight of the banana fruit. This means that for every truck that enters the city carrying matooke, 30% of the cargo is garbage.
Banana peels contain 6-9% protein in the dry matter; variable quantities of starch and soluble sugars, phosphorus, iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, zinc, copper and potassium. Green banana peels contain about 40% starch that is transformed into sugars after ripening.
A lactating dairy cow needs a good supply of glucose due to the demands of milk synthesis for glucose. It is practical to produce animal ensiled feedstuff by utilizing banana peels which have been discarded in urban food markets which can advantage the small-scale urban dairy cattle farmers.
According to Dr Jolly Kabirizi, livestock feeds consultant, despite the potential use of banana peels in livestock feed, handling this by-product has complicated its use by farmers because of the high moisture content (about 80%).
Therefore, it is necessary to support the processing of this material to reduce the moisture content, allowing nutrient concentration and inhibition of the proliferation of deteriorating microorganisms, longer storage time and reduction of transportation costs.
“For small-scale urban dairy cattle farmers, the high-grade conventional feed resources such as Napier grass is quite expensive to get and also less available. It is therefore necessary to increase the availability of alternative feed resources for cattle,” Kabirizi says.
She advises that producing feed resources from ensiled banana peels that contain valuable nutrients like glucose is important as alternative feed resources, especially for resolving scarcity of feed resources.
How to process banana peels;
-Collect fresh peels from the market or homesteads
-You can feed them fresh to the goats and cows or;
-Dry them under the sun or solar drier
-You can take them to a mill for breaking down into smaller particles or use a pounding mortar
-There after you can directly feed the animals or mix them with other feeds for example maize bran
