Effects of feeding diluted diets on growth performance and morpho-metric body parameters of exotic and improved local chicks.

Abstract

Two hundred chicks consisting of one hundred exotic layers and one hundred improved local chicks of local and exotic (LXE) genotypes were investigated to determine the effect of diet dilution on performance and growth traits of chicks for a period of twenty eight days. Standard chick’s diet was diluted with 20 percent wheat offal, palm kernel cake, baobab seed meal, respectively and fed to each chick’s type ad libitum throughout the trial period in a 2x4 factorial experimental design. Data collected included feed intake (FI), weight gain (WG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), body weight (BW) and morphometric body parameters such as body girth (BG), body length (BL), shank length (SL), shank diameter (SD), thigh length (TL), keel length (KL), wing length (WL) and drumstick (DL) and analyzed using one way analysis of variance of SAS statistical package. FI, WG, FCR, BW and all the morphometric body parameters were significantly (p<0.05) affected by genotype and diet dilution. Significant interaction existed between chicken genotypes and diets type for all the morphometric body parameters measured. Dilution of recommended diets should not be encouraged as the chicks fed diluted diets had poorer performance compared to those fed non-diluted standard diet during the experimental period. Therefore, small scale farmers are advised against such practice.

Keywords: Diet dilution, Baobab seed meal, Genotype, palm kernel cake, Wheat offal.