Hematological and carcass characteristics of finisher broilers fed varying levels of dietary pawpaw leaf meal

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the effect of varying levels of pawpaw leaf meal (PLM) on haematological and carcass characteristics of broiler birds. Sixty broilers of five weeks old were used for the study which lasted for five weeks. The birds were assigned to four treatment diets with three replicates. The finisher rations were formulated in which PLM was incorporated at 0.5%, 1.5% and 2.0% in T2, T3 and T4 respectively. T1 had no PLM and served as the control diet. The diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous containing 2,850kcal ME/kg and 20% crude protein. At the end of the experiment, data collected on haematological and carcass characteristics were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) in a completely Randomized Design (CRD). Results showed that there were significant (p < 0.05) improvements on the haematological and carcass characteristics of birds fed the treatment diets. Birds on T4 diets had (p <0.05) better haemoglobin concentration (Hb) of 10.17 and packed cell volume (PCV) of (31%) as against the control diet of Hb (8.09%) and PCV (25.97%). The carcass characteristics of the birds followed similar trend in which T4 had significant higher values of 2,168g and 73.90% for dressed weight and dressed % respectively while T1 (control) had the lowest values of 1,786g and 68.96% for dressed weight and dressed% respectively. It is concluded that incorporating 2.0% PLM (T4) into the diets of broilers helped to improve the hematopoietic tissue resulting in an enhanced haematological indices and carcass yield of the broiler birds.