Effects of Palm Oil Sludge Supplementation in Starter Diets of Broiler Chickens on Growth Performance, Economic Analysis, Feed Conversion and Skin Pigmentation.

Uche D.E. Ogbuokiri; Vitus Izuazu; Maxwell Edih; Callistus A. Marcus and Colman Ibe

Abstract

The effects of dietary palm oil sludge supplementation on growth performance, economic analysis, feed conversion and skin pigmentation of broiler starter chickens were investigated in a 21-day feeding trial. One hundred and twenty (120) Cobb broiler chicks selected from a pool of 150 day-old broiler chicks of mixed sexes (straight-run) on basis of vigor were used for this experiment. They were reared from day old to one week of age following standard procedures and strict bio-security measures, using commercial feed before being randomly divided into five groups of 24 birds each. They were assigned to five treatment diets containing 0% (control), 2.5%, 5%, 10% and 12.5% dietary palm oil sludge. Each group was further divided into four replicates of six birds each in a completely randomized design (CRD). Treatment 5 had better mean daily weight gain/bird (g) than treatments 1, 2 and 3. The weight gain got better with the increase in the percentage inclusion rate from treatment 2 (2.5%) to treatment 5 (12.5%). The mean daily feed intake of birds in treatments 4 and 5 were higher than those of the other treatments. The feed conversion ratio was not significant (p>0.05) for all the treatments. The economics of production shows that the feed cost was highest for treatment 1 (N64.56) and decreased with increasing levels of dietary palm oil sludge supplementation in treatments 4 and 5 with N58.44 each. This suggests that dietary palm oil sludge supplementation would be economical and also cost-effective. Shank pigmentation scores show a high positive correlation between color scores of the shank and additive amounts of palm oil sludge.

Key words

Palm oil sludge, starter broiler, performance, shank pigmentation