Comparative performance and water intake of four breeds of broiler chickens fed a popular commercial diet in Kuta

Résumé

Low protein intake and rapid human population growth in addition constitute a major problem facing developing countries. To solve this problem of lack of adequate intake of animal products and to increase the output by majority of Nigerians, there is the need to improve poultry and poultry products production by putting a lot of effort in the production of highly reproductive animals becomes very important. The aim of this work is to compare the performance of four breeds of broiler chickens fed a popular commercial Diet in Kuta. One hundred and twenty, day-old chicks of different breeds, and thirty each (Arbor acre, Marshal, Anak, Cobb) were selected and randomly allotted to four treatments with three replicates each in a completely randomized experimental design. Result from the experiment revealed that there was no significance (P< 0.05) difference among the treatments in terms of water intake, feed intake body weight gain and feed conversion efficiency. Anak and Cobb breeds has the highest numerical values for the most of the performance indices measured such as average weekly feed intake (1425.60g, 1272.60g), total feed intake (4714.3g, 4509.8g), average weekly water intake (4046.40ml, 4317.00ml), total water intake (12698.7ml, 14527.6ml), average weekly body weight gain (298.51g, 348.13g), and feed conversion ratio (4.87, 3.67). This research show that the Cobb breed have superior performance compare to other breeds on the same feed and under same environmental condition in Kuta. This implies that the production of the four mentioned breeds can perform in Kuta but the feed is more favourable to Cobb breed.