NUTRITIONAL STUDIES USING ECONOMICAL FEED FORMULATIONS FOR BROILER CHICKENS

Abstract

This present study was carried out in a poultry nutrition farm, Poultry Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, Shoubra El-Kheima, Egypt, and laboratory of company Feedmix, El-Obour City, Egypt for feed processing in the period from April 2018 to Feb 2019. The chemical analysis was conducted at the laboratories of the Poultry Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, and Lab of Feedmix company, El-Obour City, Egypt. This study comprised two lab and three farms’ experiments to investigate the effect of the addition of calcium lignosulphonate as a pellet binder in different levels for poultry feed and its effects on growth performance, carcass characteristics, mortality and also, effects on feed processing, fine returns, moisture percent, water activity, pellet durability, production rate and energy consumption of feed processing. Five hundred and forty Arbo Acres chicks, one-day-old were used in these experiments for 33 days. The chicks were allocated randomly into 54 pens (10 chicks/ pen). Each pen was considered as an experimental replicate which was assigned in treatments with three replicates each. Basal starter, grower, and finisher diets were formulated to meet the nutrient requirements according to the nutritional reco mmendation of NRC and considered as a co mmon control diet for all experiments. The diets were supplemented with three levels of Calcium lignosulphonate CLS (2, 4, or 8 Kg/ Ton of feed) in different pellet sizes (1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 mm), according to experimented design. The results obtained in this study could be su mmarized