Effect of Palm Oil Supplementation in Yam Peel Meal Diets Fed to Broilers

Abstract

A 56 day trial was conducted to evaluate the nutritive value of Yam Peel Meal (YPM) in broiler diets. A total of 225 day-old broiler birds with an average initial weight of 43g were used. The birds were randomly allotted to five dietary treatments, with three replicates of 15 birds each in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The YPM based diets had equal amounts of yam peels (20%, determined as the best level of inclusion of YPM from a previous trial) in both the starter and finisher phases of the experiment and were supplemented with varying levels of palm oil (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4%) for diets 1-5 respectively. During the starter phase of the experiment, there were significant differences (P<0.05) in daily feed intake and feed cost per kilogram gain among the dietary treatments, with diet 2 (20% yam peel meal and 1% palm oil) promoting the best overall performance. During the finisher phase, daily feed intake, feed conversion ratio, average daily gain and cost per kilogram gain differed significantly (P<0.05) among treatments. The use of YPM and palm oil at graded levels improved the quality of the yam peel meal based diets and favoured its digestibility. It was concluded that supplementation of 20% YPM based diet with 3 % palm oil promotes better performance at least cost in broiler finisher diets.

Key words: Palm oil supplementation; Yam Peel Meal; broilers