| dc.description.abstract | Porcupine is a wild animal that has been protected by the goverment because of a decrease in it’s population. There are many factors affecting the decrease in porcupine population : illegal hunting for human consumption due to low colesterol content in its meat or for traditional medicine to cure some diseases. Porcupine meat is believed to improve male stamina and cure various diseases. Porcupine meat quality is influenced by feeds that are consumed and digested. Porcupine is a hindgut fermenter animal that ferment their feeds, especially forage and fibrous feeds, in the caecum by microbes. However, there is limited information about feed fermentation by bacteria and its enzyme activity in caecum of porcupine. Therefore, this experiment was conducted to explore the bacteria and enzyme activity degrading cellulose, amylose and lipid from the feeds in the caecum of porcupine. The caecum of porcupine was taken from eight animals that were two males and six females. These animals were divided into two groups and given two treatments. The treatments were control feeds that consisted of jaat grass, bengkoang, belitung taro, sweet corn, tomato, banana, and mineral sources (KO) and control feed plus koi fish pellet (KP = KO + koi fish pellet). Since the digesta had been stored, it was necessary to study the incubation time (0 and 1 h). The experiment was conducted in factorial completely block design (2x2) with factor A was feed types, and factor B was incubation period. Variables measured were bacterial population and enzyme activity degrading cellulose, amylose and lipid; data were analysed using analysis of variance for bacterial population, and t test for enzyme activity. The result showed that the addition of koi fish pellet did not increase population of bacteria and enzyme activity. Bacterial population was affected by incubation time, but this factor did not influence enzyme activity. It is concluded that addition of koi fish pellet had stimulated enzyme activity without increasing bacterial population. A reverse result was obtained for the effect of incubation time. | en |
