Performance and Carcass Quality of Broier Placed on Pro-Vitamin A Cassava and Sweet Cassava-Based Diets

Abstract

This experiment was carried out to determine the performance and carcass quality of broilers placed on pro-vitamin A cassava and sweet cassava-based diets using maize-based diet as control. The results show that daily weight gain of birds placed on maize-based diet (19.67g) was statistically higher (p 0.05) among themselves. The average daily feed intake of the maize- based diets (54.07g/day) was significantly higher (p 0.05) between each other. The feed conversion ratio of 2.75 for maize, 3.52 for sweet cassava and 3.26 for pro-vitamin A cassava did not show any significant difference (p>0.05) among the diets. The carcass weight showed a higher result in maize-based diet (743.18g), followed by pro-vitamin A cassava diet (681.32g) and sweet cassava showing the least result (655.28g). However there is no significant difference (p>0.05) among the diets. The cost of production was highest with maize based diets ( N 1,305.79) while that of sweet cassava (N736.94) and pro-vitamin A cassava (N982.91) were cheaper showing 43.56% and 24.73% cost reduction respectively. The lower cost of production with sweet cassava and pro-vitamin A cassava compensates the lower growth rate, suggesting that any of these variety of cassava can totally replace maize in broiler diet without any deleterious effect when properly processed to reduce the cyanogenic content of the cassava to non-toxic level.