​Modelling the Evolution of Serum Cholesterol Level of Broiler Chickens

Abstract

Background: With the demand of the growing population, the broiler industry has grown up rapidly over the last few decades and it plays as an affordable source of good quality nutritious animal protein. This broiler industry focuses mainly on optimizing the profit through improving body weight and feed efficiency but the health issues of consumers are not taken into consideration seriously. It is important to know the changing pattern of concentration level of the biochemical parameter (total cholesterol) due to different feeds as well as different ages of chicken. Methods: This experimental study through longitudinal data was conducted using repeated measurements from each of seventy randomly selected broilers, partitioned into two groups according to two types of feed, at four-time points. Since measurements from the same subject were taken at four time periods, traditional approach of analysis may not be appropriate as it ignore the correlation between repeated measurements. Therefore, linear mixed model was adopted for the analysis of our obtained dataset. Result: Linear mixed effect model did not reveal any significant difference of standard and hatcher’s supplied feeds over time on the evolution of total cholesterol level. This might be due to little difference in different compositions of both feeds. However, both exploratory data analysis and modelling confirmed that irrespective of the available feed types, total cholesterol level of broiler serum increased significantly over time (age) which leads to a recommendation for the consumers to eat younger age (lower weight) broiler chicken.