Effect Of Dietary Protein Levels On The Performance And Carcass Characteristics Of Cockerel Finishers

Abstract

A study was carried out to investigate the effect of dietary crude protein (CP) levels in diets of 2600kcal/kg metabolisable energy content on the performance and carcass characteristics of cockerel finishers. The experimental diets A, B, C, D and E contained CP levels of 140, 160, 180, : 200 and 220g/kg and they were produced by modified diet dilution technique. Response criteria such as weight gain and feed conversion ratio, among others, and carcass characteristics were measured. Results on performance and carcass characteristics, with the exception of the neck, intestinal weights and other visceral offals, revealed that these response criteria were optimized in the birds fed on 180g/kg dietary CP level. Beyond this level, it was not beneficial to feed higher CP levels. It
is therefore, concluded that the CP requirement of finisher cockerels is 18% on the bases of their performance and carcass characteristics.

Keywords: Cockerel finishers, Dietary crude protein levels, performance, carcass characteristics