Abstract
Nutrition factors are considered to be very important for incidence of foot-pad dermatitis through the effect on the quality of litter. Objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the use of two feeding programs for broilers available on the market and declared in the nutritional/economical sense as standard and economical, on quality of litter, incidence of leg dermatitis (foot-pad and hock burns) and production performance. Trial was carried out on 500 one day old chickens of Hubbard genotype, in two treatments and five replicates. Chopped straw was used as litter. During the trial, the mortality and food consumption were monitored, and at the end of trial the body mass was controlled, as well as the incidence of foot-pad and hock burns and their severity were evaluated and quality of litter analyzed. Research results indicate significant effect of the diets from the aspect of broiler welfare and productivity. Application of the feeding program declared in the nutritional/economical sense as economical resulted in higher content of litter moisture, significantly higher frequency of incidence of the most severe forms of foot-pad dermatitis and significantly lower broiler performance.
Highlights
Foot-pad dermatitis is important indicator in broiler welfare assessment (Škrbić et al, 2011) but recently it became important from the market aspect, considering that chicken legs represent valuable product on the Asian market
Objective of the paper was to investigate the effect of the diets from two, commercially available broiler feeding programs, declared in nutritional/economical sense as standard and economical, on production performance, litter quality and incidence of leg dermatitis
Frequency of incidence of the most severe forms of foot-pad dermatitis was significantly (p
Summary
Foot-pad dermatitis is important indicator in broiler welfare assessment (Škrbić et al, 2011) but recently it became important from the market aspect, considering that chicken legs represent valuable product on the Asian market. As a consequence of actual ban of animal proteins, the high level of plant proteins in the composition of poultry mixtures implicates increase of the quantity carbon-hydrates as well, which results in bad digestibility, absorption and in increase of incidence of nonspecific digestion disorders that influence water consumption and litter quality. Trend of increase of maize and soybean prices in the world and domestic markets, with evaluation that the prices of these two main energy/protein food components of the highest quality used in poultry nutrition will maintain this level long-term (Ziggers, 2011), further aggravate formulation of high value nutritional mixture programs used in feeding of modern broilers at an acceptable market price. Objective of the paper was to investigate the effect of the diets from two, commercially available broiler feeding programs, declared in nutritional/economical sense as standard and economical, on production performance, litter quality and incidence of leg dermatitis (foot-pad and hock burns)
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