Growth Performance, Carcass Traits and Economy of Broiler Chickens Fed Straight Diets with Varying Dietary Protein Levels

Abstract

Protein is an indispensable and expensive nutrient needed in poultry diet to meet their essential nutrient requirement.  It plays a vital role in structural and protective tissue formation and maintenance, growth, body repairs and egg formation. Compounding and feeding of straight diet to broilers by local farmers will help to ameliorate problems of malnutrition, disturbed growth and loss observed in Nigerian villages due to seasonal shortage of commercial feed to broilers before they reach maturity. The growth Performance, carcass traits, and economy of broiler chicken fed straight diets with varying dietary levels of protein were evaluated. Four diets were compounded and tagged diets 1, 2, 3, and 4 with four Crude protein (CP) levels of 18, 20, 22, and 24%, respectively with a constant Metabolizable energy (ME) level of 3200 kcalME/KgDM. One hundred and twenty-one (121) day-old-chicks were randomly allotted to four dietary treatments with 30 birds per treatment. Each treatment was replicated 3 times and each replicate had 10 birds. The birds were fed experimental diets for 7 weeks. Significant differences were observed in daily feed intake, daily Body Weight Gain (BWG), final body weight, daily ME intake, daily protein intake, protein and energy efficiency ratios, but feed conversion ratio, percentage of dressed weight, thigh and internal organs besides gizzard, spleen, and pancreas were similar. It was concluded that feeding broiler chicken with diet containing 18% crude protein and 3200 kcalME/kgDM for 7weeks gave the optimal performance of live weight (2259.00 g) with the least cost of feed intake per Kg BWG (₦426.22 or 0.60USD). Optimal performance per dressed weight (2,125.33 g) was obtained for broilers fed diets containing 20% CP and 3200 KCalME/KgDM with the highest revenue per dressed weight (₦2,087.60 or 2.94USD), and the highest gross margin (₦1,280.00 or 1.80USD).