Influence of Dietary Substitution of Palm Oil by Rapeseed Oil at Different Levels on Growth Performance and Economics of Broilers

Abstract

Background: Fat and oil are commonly used in poultry diets to increase energy density and also to increase the palatability of feed, feed efficiency and for deposition of fat in broilers. Thus a study was proposed to find the effects of dietary replacement of saturated fatty acid rich palm oil (PO) by omega-3 rich rapeseed oil (RO) on growth performance and economics in broilers. Method: The growth performance feeding trial was conducted in 160 day-old broilers (vencobb 400) with four treatment groups (G1, G2, G3 and G4) with four replicates of ten chicks each. The basal diet (R1) was prepared with palm oil included at the rate of 1.5, 3, and 4.5 per cent in pre-starter, starter and finisher ration, respectively and fed to G1. The other treatment groups G2, G3 and G4 received R2, R3 and R4 experimental rations respectively. The experimental rations R2, R3 and R4 were prepared with rapeseed oil replacing 25, 50 and 100 per cent of palm oil which was included in R1. Result: The broiler ration prepared with rapeseed oil at 50 and 100 per cent level (G3 and G4) replacing palm oil showed increased body weight gain (P less than 0.01) and better feed conversion ratio (P less than 0.05) than G1 group. There was no significant difference in the feed intake among the different treatment groups. Profit per kg live weight in G3 (Rs.12.06) and G4 (Rs.11.14) was more than G1 (Rs.8.21) and G2 (Rs.6.57). The supplementation of omega-3 rich rapeseed oil had significantly improved the performance of broilers.