Nutrient Digestibility, Organ Weight and Economic Benefits of Broiler Chickens Fed Graded Level of Donkey’s Ceacal Meal

Abstract

The high cost of poultry feed ingredients has become a threat due to challenging demands and climate change that affects crops production. This environmental problem is a severe limitations to both crops yields, livestock and human being on struggle for food. Hence, this study measures the nutrient digestibility of the alternative feed ingredients, organ weights and economic benefits of broilers fed test diets. Three hundred day old Anak breeds were used and the birds were randomly assigned to five diets in a completely randomized design consisting of four replicates with 15 birds per replicate. Five experimental diets were formulated. Diets were replaced with donkey’s ceacal meal (DCM) such that diet 1 (T1) served as control (0%). Diet T2 contained 2.5% and diets T3, T4 and T5 contained 5.0%, 7.5%, 10% (DCM) respectively. The experiment lasted for eight weeks. The data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Duncan New multiple Range Test. The results of the nutrient digestibility revealed that there were significantly (P<0.05) different in all the parameters measured. There was no significant (P<0.05) differences in the parameters measured for heart, kidney and lungs. The result revealed that cost/kg feed (N), cost of feed consume/bird in (N), the cost of kg/weight gain and cost of production/bird showed that treatment diets improved the birds (P<0.05) higher in control diet than the replaced diets 2.5% -10% DCM. Diet (T2) had highest (P<0.05) value in the revenue (at N750 /kg)/bird here. The DCM could be replaced up to 10% without any negative outcome on the broiler chickens.