Utilization of Shea Caterpillar (Cirina butyrospermi) Larvae Meal as Organic Feed Resource for Broiler Chickens

Abstract

Aims: The increasing feed cost of poultry production makes a search for suitable alternatives essential. A five-week study was conducted to determine the outcome of dietary shea caterpillar larvae meal (SCM) on growth performance, haematological and blood biochemical characteristics of broiler chickens. Study Design: A Completely Randomized Design (CRD) was used for the experiment. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Animal Science Education (Poultry Section of the Animal farm) of Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Development, Asante Mampong, Ghana. The study lasted for five weeks. Methodology: Ninety 4-week-old sexed Cobb 500 broiler chickens were assigned to five dietary treatments with three replicates. Each treatment had 18 birds with 6 birds per replicate in a male to female ratio of 4:2. Five dietary treatments were formulated to replace anchovy at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% with shea caterpillar larvae meal and designated as SCM0% (The Control), SCM25%, SCM50%, SCM75%, and SCM100% respectively. Data collected included proximate and amino acid analysis of shea caterpillar meal, growth performance, blood profile and cost benefit analysis. Data collected were subjected to analysis of variance with General Linear Model (GLM) procedure of Statistical Analysis System (SAS for windows, version 7). Results: The proximate and amino acids results showed that shea caterpillar meal contains 60.42 % crude protein, a crude fibre of 7.90 %, and 3306.76 kcal/kg of metabolizable energy as well as fifteen amino. There was a significant difference (P=0.05) among all the treatment means for daily feed and water intake, final body weight and total weight gain. For mean daily feed intake, SCM0% was similar to SCM25%, but statistically different from SCM50%, SCM75% and SCM100%. Birds fed dietary SCM25% (5134 g/bird) consumed more feed while the least was recorded from birds fed SCM75% (4615g/bird). Similar trend was observed for total water intake. Mean Final weight and total weight gain, birds fed SCM0%, SCM25% and SCM50% were similar, but statistically better than SCM75% and SCM100%. It was noticed that final weight and total weight gain decreases as the inclusion levels of shea caterpillar meal increases. The haematological and biochemical attributes were not significant except for red cell distribution width coefficient of variation and globulin respectively. The red cell distribution width coefficient of variation values of birds on all the treatments was similar and more than twice the value obtained for the control treatment SCM0%. The globulin values of the birds fed the control, were similar to SCM25% and SCM50% but were significantly different from birds fed SCM75% and SCM100%. Conclusion: It was concluded that the substitution of SCM for fish meal at a level not exceeding 50% had no detrimental effect but improved growth performance.