Effect of animal by-products on the growth performance of broiler chickens

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the growth performance of broilers fed diets containing fishmeal and different animal by-products meals as feather meal, meat and bone meal (MBM), and blood meal from 15 to 42 days of age. A total of 240 male Ross 308 broiler chickens aged 14 days were individually weighed and randomly allocated to four experimental treatments by using a completely randomized design (CRD). Each treatment consisted of 6 replicates and 10 birds per replicate. From days 15 to 42, chickens were provided four experimental diets: treatment 1 (T1)5% fish meal based diet as control, treatment 2 (T2)5% feather meal based diet, treatment 3 (T3)5% meat and bone meal based diet, and treatment 4 (T4)5% blood meal based diet. Broiler feed intake, weight gain and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were measured and calculated on weekly basis. On weekly performance basis, feed intake of broilers did not differ significantly (p>0.05) among all treatments on 4 th and 5 th weeks, and the weight gain of broilers fed different dietary treatments were not significant differences (p>0.05) on 5 th and 6 th weeks. Other results based on weekly and cumulative performance showed T1 was highest feed intake, weight gain, final body weight and FCR among the treatments, then T3 was higher performance than T2 and T4. The treatment 4 was the poorest cumulative FCR among all different dietary treatments. It can be concluded that broiler fed diet with 5% fishmeal is the most beneficial, and 5% blood meal is the poorest performance among the treatments.