PERFORMANCE AND CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS OF BROILER CHICKENS FED LOW PROTEIN DIETS CONTAINING HYDROLYZED FEATHER MEAL, WITH OR WITHOUT PROTEASE SUPPLEMENTATION.
AJAYI, H. I. AND AKOMA, O. C.
ABSTRACT
In a 2x2x3 factorial arrangement, two hundred and forty day-old broiler chicks were allocated randomly into eight treatment diets. There were two levels of hydrolyzed feather meal (HFM) 0 and 2%, two levels of protease 0g/kg and 5g/kg and three levels of crude protein 23%, 17.4% and 15.5%. There were ten birds in a replicate and three replicates per treatment diet. Birds were fed with treatment diets for 42 days. The feed intake (FI, g/bird), body weight gain (BWG, g/bird), carcass weights as percentage of live
were assessed at 42 days. The feed conversion ratio was calculated from the feed intake and the body weight gain. At the end of the experiment birds on dietary treatment 4 had better BWG (1115.3g/bird) than birds fed the control dietary treatment 1, (1077.7g/bird) though not a significant improvement at p=0.05. Treatment 4 produced a lower FI (1280g/bird) compared with birds fed the…