NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF BISCUIT DOUGH ON PERFORMANCE AND NUTRIENT UTILIZATION OF BROILER CHICKENS

Abstract

This study was conducted for fifty-two days to investigate the effect of graded levels of biscuit dough (BD) on growth performance, nutrient utilization and carcass characteristics of broilers. A total of 144 day old broilers (Arbor-acre strain) were used for this study. They were completely randomized and divided into four treatment groups. Each group had three replicates of twelve birds per replicate. Four experimental diets were formulated such that control had maize and treatment 2, 3, and 4 had 5, 10, 15% inclusion of BD respectively at both starter and finisher phases. The response of the broilers to dietary treatments were measured by feed intake (kg/bird), final weight (kg/bird), feed conversion ratio (F CR) and nutrients utilization. There were significant differences (p<0.05) across the treatments with treatment 3 and 4 (10 and 15%BD) having the highest values of 104.01 g/bird and 104.63 g/bird daily feed intake and treatment 1(T1) having the least value of 98.17 g/bird/day. For the final live weight, treatments 4, 5 had similar (p>0.05) weight gain (2.55 kg/bird) while treatment I had the least (2.25kg/bird). Addition of BD reduced the cost per kg weight gain by approximately 10% (9.37%) at 15% inclusion level. The nutrient digestibility were not significantly affected (p>0.05) across the treatments except the dry matter and nitrogen free extract digestibilities. Treatment 1 (O%BD), 2 (3% BD) and 3 (10%BD) had similar dry matter and nitrogen free extract digestibilities while treatment 4 was significantly (p<0.05) lower. It is concluded that biscuit dough can replace 15% maize in finisher diets at both starter and finisher phases without negative effect on performance characteristics of broiler chickens time biscuit quality, they are yet to undergone