GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF BROILER CHICKENS FED DIFFERENT DIETARY ENERGY SOURCES

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of broilers fed diets containing different energy sources. Five diets containing maize, red sorghum, white sorghum, Gero millet and Dauro millet were formulated anddesignated as diets 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Two hundred and Ten (210) day old Marshall Breed of broiler chicks were randomly allotted to five dietary treatments in a completely randomized design and each of the treatment replicated three times. Feed and water were provided ad libitum and the feeding trial lasted for eight weeks. At the starter phase, daily feed intake (33.05-47.52g ;), daily weight gain (9.74-19.43g ;) and feed conversion ratio (2.46-3.43) were significantly (P<0.001-0.05) affected by the dietary treatments. At the finisher phase, daily weight gain (27.20-45.80g) was significantly (P<0.001) influenced while daily feed intake and feed conversion did not differ significantly. The overall performance revealed that, daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio were significantly (P<0.001-0.05) affected, however, daily feed intake was not influenced by the dietary treatments. It is there for concluded that millet and dauro can effectively replace the most widely used maize in feed formulation , this is because of their lower feed conversion ratio.It is therefore recommended that farmers should use either ordinary millet or dauro in comounding diets for their broiler chickens.