GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF BROILER CHICKENS FED Moringa oleifera DRIED LEAF MEAL AS A PHYTOGENIC REPLACEMENT OF SYNTHETIC PREMIX

Globe! focus on organic food products and the search for alternative replacement of synthetic feed supplements and additives cs m Low — Income Food Deficit Countries (LlFDCs) necessitated the evaluation of performance and cost of broilers f '/ Moringa oleifera dried leaf meal as a pliytogenic replacement of synthetic premix using a total of one hundred 1100) Anak drain of day old broilers that we re randomly assigned to five treatment groups of two replicates each representing 0, 25, .'i 75 and 1007c replacement by weight of synthetic premix with Moringa oleifera. Experimental diets were formulated to provide crude protein (CP7c) and metabolizable energy (ME) of 227c CP and 3200 keal/kg ME and 207o CP and 3000 keal/kg ME and the feeding trail lasted (I- 2S d) and (29- 52 d) for starter and finisher phases, respectively. Performance and cost parameters (average body weight gain (DWG) feed intake, FCR, the Performance index (PI), cost of feed per kilogramme (kg) diets, total cost offeed consumed, cost offeed per kilogramme kg body weight gain, total cost of production, revenue and gross margin) evaluated in this study showed no significant (P>0.05) difference for both starter and finisher phases. However, T3 group gave the 7'csi value for gross margin when compared with Tj and Ty (516.46 vs 504.19 vs 477.80) recorded in this experiment, h was concluded that Moringa oleifera dried leaf meal can ser>e as a cost effective pliytogenic replacement of synthetic premix in broiler feeds