Effect of meals of sweat potato and cassava varieties formulated with soya meal or cottonseed meal on broiler production

Abstract

Sundried sweet potato tuber and cassava root meal with peels were incorporated at 40% levels of the ration and fed from zero to eight weeks to broilers. Diets had soya bean meal or cottonseed meal as principal protein source. Growing and finishing chickens consumed more of the soyabean- supplemented diets than diets containing cottonseed meal as base protein. Chicks found root crop based diets less palatable than maize based diet but older birds adapted well to diets.



At eight weeks of age, chickens ate and grew similarly on the cassava white meal (3985, 1987 g/bird) and maize (4312,2080 g/bird), but these traits were significantly (P<0.05) superior to those of birds fed sweet potato variety 1112 (4009, 1801 g/bird), Cassava red meal (4033, 1797 g/bird) and sweet potato variety TIBI (4009, 157 g g/bird). The efficiency of food utilization values showed that birds fed CWM were most efficient followed by those fed maize, SP1112 and CRM based diets. The most inefficient diet was that based on SPTIBI suggesting that there were varietal differences among potato and cassava meals.



The Journal of Food Technology in Africa Volume 5 Number 4 (October - December 2000), pp. 115-119