Abstract
A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of quantitative feed restriction on the performance and the production cost of broiler chickens. A total of 120, Indian River, day-old broiler chicks were randomly allocated into four dietary treatment groups such as 100% diet as control treatment and 90%, 80% and 70% diets, in floor pens. All treatments were replicated thrice with 10 birds each in a Completely Randomized Design. Broiler chickens were fed broiler starter diet from day 1 to day 21 and broiler finisher diet from day 22 to day 42. The results revealed that the body weight gain in the birds fed with 90% diet was significantly higher than those of control diet during finisher and overall phases and vice-versa during starter period. The feed intakes of birds were significantly decreased with the severity of feed restriction during all periods. However, significantly the lowest overall feed conversion ratio was reported in the birds fed with 70% diet. Furthermore, higher relative liver and lung weights were observed in the control treatment while they had lower relative heart weight. The spleen was significantly increased in the birds fed with 90% diet. It could be concluded that giving 90% of the recommended diet to the broiler chickens increases growth, immunity and income.
Highlights
Growth performance of broiler chickens has been increased spectacularly over the last 30 years mainly due to the genetic progress, improvements of nutrition and controlled environment so that it takes only 33 days to reach finishing body weight of about 2 kg (Wilson, 2005)
Feed restriction programs used to reduce abdominal and carcass fat in broiler chickens rely on the phenomenon called compensatory growth to produce market body weight similar to control groups and to reduce high feed cost for broiler feeds
This experiment was designed with an objective to study the effects of quantitative feed restriction on the performance and the cost of production of broiler chickens
Summary
Growth performance of broiler chickens has been increased spectacularly over the last 30 years mainly due to the genetic progress, improvements of nutrition and controlled environment so that it takes only 33 days to reach finishing body weight of about 2 kg (Wilson, 2005). The results revealed that the birds fed with 90% of the control diet (T2) recorded significantly the highest (p
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