An eight-week trial was conducted to evaluate the influence of graded levels (0, 25 and 50% denoted R 0 , R 1 & R 2 ) of cottonseed cake (CSC) based diets used as supplement for Pennisetum purpureum and Desmodium intortum basal diets on the feed intake, growth rate and carcass characteristics of guinea pigs. Mean daily feed intake for the treatments R o , R 1 and R 2 were 15.80 ± 0.70 g/day, 14.33 ± 0.94 g/day, 21.04 ± 1.26 g/day and 15.94 ± 0.77 g/day, 18.03 ± 1.11 g/day, 21.32 ± 1.14 g/day

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... females and males respectively. Considering the type of feed, there was a highly significant (P< 0.01) difference between consumption of Pennisetum, Desmodium and concentrate within the sexes and for all the treatments. Animals showed a high preference for Pennisetum followed by Desmodium and concentrate. The percent forage dry matter (DM) intake increased from 85.30% for R o to 88.90% for R 2 for females and 84.90% to 88.50% for males. There were no significant differences (P> 0.05) in the within treatment sex differences in total DM intake. Respective mean weekly weight gains for R o , R 1 and R 2 were 13.17 ± 1.05 g, 13.42 ± 0.62 g, 10.56 ± 1.56 g for males and 12.14 ± 0.83 g, 10.62 ± 1.13 g, 6.31 ± 0.70 g for females. There were significant differences (P< 0.05) in the within treatment sex differences, for these values in treatments R 1 and R 2 . The between treatment variation in sexes for these values was only observed for females between treatment R 2 and the other two treatments. Overall mean weekly weight gain for the treatments (R o , R 1 and R 2 ) were 12.65 ± 0.94 g, 12.12 ± 0.88 g and 8.44 ± 1.13 g respectively. Significant (P< 0.05) difference in these values was only observed between treatment R 2 and the preceding treatments (R o and R 1 ). Feed efficiency for males and females for the respective treatments were 8. 39, 7.47, 13.95 and 9.19, 11.88, 23.65 respectively. Overall feed efficiency values showed a linear increase from R o (8.78) to R 2 (17.57). Overall mean mortality figures also showed a similar trend with R o and R 1 having the same value of 6.67% and R 2 having a numerically higher value of 33.33%.