Effect of natural daylight intensity, overnight artificial LED light colors and duration on growth performance of female broilers

Abstract

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> The study was conducted to investigate whether manipulating the daylight intensity, the overnight artificial light colors and duration could affect the growth performance of Xiaoshan broiler chicken, a variety in China. All of 200 female chickens were reared under yellow LED (30 lux) for 12 h at night from Day 1 to 12, and then randomly divided into two groups based on different daylight intensity: group 1 (208.44 lux) and group 2 (72.78lux). In each group, 60 broilers were exposed to six artificial light color treatments: without artificial light (N), white LED (W), red LED (R), blue LED (B), green LED (G) and yellow LED (Y) for 8 h overnight; 40 broilers were reared in four yellow light duration treatments: none artificial light (Y0), 4 h (Y4), 8 h (Y8) and 12 h (Y12) at night. All the artificial light intensity controlled at 15 lux approximately. Feed conversion ratio (FCR), Body weight (BW), uniformity of BW were determined every two weeks. At the end of experiment, we found that, in group 1, the BW of Y was higher than N(P≤0.1), while the BW of Y4 was lower than Y8 and Y12(P≤0.1). The BW gain and uniformity of Y8 was higher than the other three duration treatments, which was found both in group 1 and 2. Comparing group 1 to 2, we found that, in light duration treatments, the mean BW gain and FCR of group 2 was separately 94.87g higher and 0.09 lower than group 1, while in light color treatments, the mean BW gain and uniformity of group 2 was 83.00 g and 0.01 higher than group 1 respectively. These results suggested: ①8 h light duration might be a better photoperiod for Xiaoshan chicken in this rearing pattern; ② the lower daylight intensity would promote a better growth performance, it would be an important factor for this kind of poultry production.