PERFORMANCE AND CARCASS EVALUATION OF BROILER CHICKENS FED DIFFERENT COMMERCIAL DIETS

Abstract

An experiment was carried out to determine the utilization of five selected commercial broiler chicken diets by broilers. Three hundred day-old chicks were randomly allotted to five diets in replicates of three containing 20 birds each in a Completely Randomized Design. Feed and water were supplied ad libitum and the feeding trial lasted for six weeks. Results for overall performance, indicated that daily feed intake was higher (P<0.05) on diets A (103.00 g), D (101.79 g) E (100.18 g) and B (96.06 g) which were the same and lower on diet C85.21 g) while daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio assumed the same trend as daily feed intake. Carcass evaluation showed a higher (P<0.05) dressing percentage on diet D (76.72 %) and lowest on diet C (67.96 %). It was therefore concluded that diets D and A gave higher dressing percentages, hence recommended for broiler chicken farmers in the study area.