Faculty of Agriculture

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Browsing Faculty of Agriculture by Author "Abdurahman, H."

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    COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE OF BROILER CHICKENS FED COMMERCIAL AND ON-FARM FORMULATED DIETS
    (department of Animal Sciencce,Nasarawa., 2011-03-10) Oyewole, B.O.; Aribido, S.O.; Abdurahman, H.
    An Sform;/ (Al) and two commercial (A2 and A3) feeds marketed in Anyigba, Kogi State. Ninety (90) one-day-old chick' v procured and raised for one week on the on-farm starter diets. Thereafter, the birds were assigned to the thru' experimental diets (Al, A2 and A3) in a Completely Randomized Design arrangement for 3 weeks. Each treatment group comprised of 30 birds and 3 replicates. After 3 weeks, the birds were pooled together and fed formulated finisher diet for one week before being assigned to broiler finisher diets (Al A2 and A3) in similar arrangement as during the starter phase. For starter phase, body weight and weight gain were significantly (P<0.01) higher with commercial feeds (A2 and A3) and so was feed intake (P<0.05). On-farm feed (Al) provided comparable feed/gain ratio with A3 but better (P<0.01) than A2. Feed cost/kg gain was significantly (P<0.01) better with on-farm feed. For finishers, body weight, weight gain and feed/gain ratio of birds were similar (P>0.01). However, on-farm feed resulted in numerically better feed/gain ratio and significantly (P<0.01) better feed cost/kg gain. Feed consumption of birds on A2 and A3 were higher (P<0.05) than Al. Gross margin was similar but birds on Al had numerically higher gross margin. On-farm feed was relatively cheaper and resulted in a more profitable enterprise. It is recommended that poultry fanners should consult expens in feed formulation so as to benefit from these advantages.