Response of broiler chickens to diets of varying protein contents under ad libitum and skip-a-day feeding regimes

摘要

A 3×2 factorial experiment was used to investigate the effect of varying dietary crude protein levels; optimum (control, 19.64% CP), low (17.72% CP) and high (21.66% CP) diets, fed ad libitum and on skip-a-day bases on the performance and carcass characteristics of broiler chickens. The diets were iso-energetic. A total of 180 3-week old broiler chicks were used at three replicates per treatment and 10 birds per replicate. The feeding trial lasted for 5 weeks. Weight gain was lowest for chickens on low protein diet compared with those fed the optimum (P>0.05) and high protein diets (P0.05) by skip-a-day feeding method. Other carcass characteristics were not influenced (P>0.05) by dietary protein levels but a higher energy to protein ratio promoted the development of organs. Higher values were recorded for carcass characteristics of birds on ad libitum feeding compared with skip-a-day feeding. This study reiterates the benefit of feeding a balanced (optimum) protein diet, ad libitum to broiler chicken finishers.