Nutritional Evaluation of Processed Jatropha curcas Kernel Meals: Effect on Growth Performance of Broiler Chicks

This study was conducted to determine the growth performance of broiler chicks fed differently processed (Raw Defatted Meal RDM, Toasted Defatted Meal TDM, Cooked Defatted Meal CDM, Lye Defatted Meal LDM and Sand Roasted Defatted Meal ZRDM) Jatropha curcas kernel meals. The feeding trial lasted for 21 days. 180 day-old Marshal strain unsexed broiler chicks were used for this experiment. There were 6 dietary treatments of 30 birds per treatment and 3 replicate of 10 birds each in a complete randomized design. Each differently processed Jatropha curcas kernel meals were used to replace one-third of the soybean meal in the control diet. Data on average daily feed intake (ADFI) of birds fed control (D1) was significantly (P 0.05). Birds fed the D6 diet had the highest total mortality rate (P<0.05) from others except for those fed with the D5 diet which had a similar mortality rate. The result suggests that the processing methods improves the nutrients, however, heat treatments reduced the antinutrients with minimal effect on the saponin and phorbol esters present in the Jatropha curcas kernel meals, which resulted in low feed intake in the diets 2-6. ADFI, ADWG, FGR and total mortality were adversely affected by the dietary treatments as observed by the depressed growth rate and high mortality in birds fed Jatropha curcas meals. However, further experiment should be carried out to examine the performance of broiler chicks on bio-treated samples of the processed Jatropha curcas kernel meals.