Effects of Palm Oil Sludge Supplementation in Starter Diets of Broiler Chickens on Growth Performance, Economic Analysis, Feed Conversion and Skin Pigmentation. | ||
| Annals of Agricultural Science, Moshtohor | ||
| Article 6, Volume 56, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 1005-1012 PDF (288.13 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/assjm.2018.47791 | ||
| Author | ||
| Uche D.E. Ogbuokiri* | ||
| Department of Animal Production and Health Technology, Imo State Polytechnic Umuagwo, Ohaji, Owerri, Nigeria | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The effects of dietary palm oil sludge supplementation on growth performance, economic analysis, feed conversion and skin pigmentation of broiler starter chickens were investigated in a 21-day feeding trial. One hundred and twenty (120) Cobb broiler chicks selected from a pool of 150 day-old broiler chicks of mixed sexes (straight-run) on basis of vigor were used for this experiment. They were reared from day old to one week of age following standard procedures and strict bio-security measures, using commercial feed before being randomly divided into five groups of 24 birds each. They were assigned to five treatment diets containing 0% (control), 2.5%, 5%, 10% and 12.5% dietary palm oil sludge. Each group was further divided into four replicates of six birds each in a completely randomized design (CRD). Treatment 5 had better mean daily weight gain/bird (g) than treatments 1, 2 and 3. The weight gain got better with the increase in the percentage inclusion rate from treatment 2 (2.5%) to treatment 5 (12.5%). The mean daily feed intake of birds in treatments 4 and 5 were higher than those of the other treatments. The feed conversion ratio was not significant (p>0.05) for all the treatments. The economics of production shows that the feed cost was highest for treatment 1 (N64.56) and decreased with increasing levels of dietary palm oil sludge supplementation in treatments 4 and 5 with N58.44 each. This suggests that dietary palm oil sludge supplementation would be economical and also cost-effective. Shank pigmentation scores show a high positive correlation between color scores of the shank and additive amounts of palm oil sludge. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Palm oil sludge; starter broiler; performance; shank pigmentation | ||
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