Growth and carcass characteristics of finishing broilers on acidified blood meal based diet

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of inclusion of acidifer in a blood meal based diet on broiler performance and carcass characteristics. One hundred and eighty un-sexed 4-week old broiler chicks raised on a common starter diet were randomly distributed into four experimental diets of 3 replicates and fifteen birds per replicate consisting of a control diet devoid of blood meal and acidifier (T1). Birds on treatment 2 (T2), in addition to common ingredients, had blood meal and acidifier; birds on treatment 3 (T3) had blood meal without acidifer and birds on treatment 4 (T4) had acidifier without blood meal. The birds were fed respective diets and watered ad libitum for four weeks. Daily feed intake was not significantly (p> 0.05) affected by dietary treatment. However, birds on treatment 3 had the poorest average daily body weight gain and feed conversion ratio. The addition of acidifier to diet containing blood meal however alleviated depressed daily body weight. The final body weights were 1.78, 1.74, 1.53 and 1.71 kg for birds on diets 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. Carcass yield expressed in percent live body weight were not significantly (p< 0.05) affected. The inclusion of blood meal in the diet without the addition of acidifier caused a mortality of 22% in the chickens and that addition of acidifier at 0.3% improved the growth performance and livability of chickens.

Key words: Acidifer, blood meal, broiler, growth performance, carcass characteristics