Feeding Full Fat Palm Fruit Meal Diets with Enzymes to Broiler Chickens: 2. Carcass Characteristics and Internal Organs

Abstract

Previous work reported that feeding broiler chickens with up to 14.30% of Full Fat Palm Fruit Meal (FFPFM) with fibre degrading multienzymes had no deleterious effect on growth performance and economics. There was also no effect of enzymes supplementation compared to earlier work done with no enzymes. The focus for this particular study was on the effect of feeding FFPFM diets with fibre degrading multienzymes on the carcass characteristics as well as the internal organs of broiler chickens. One hundred and forty four one-day-old broiler chicks of Arbor Acre breeds were randomly allocated to 16 units of 4 experimental diets in a completely randomized design. The four experimental diets had graded levels of FFPFM (0, 5.0, 7.50 and 10.20% at starter stage; and 0, 7.0, 9.50 and 14.30% at finisher stage) with one level of fibre degrading multienzymes, maxigrain (from Polchem Laboratories Ltd, India with each gram containing cellulase, 10000IU; beta-glucanase, 200IU; xylanase, 10000IU and phytase, 2500FTU) added at 100g/tone of feed to T2, T3 and T4. Data were recorded daily on feed intake and weekly on weight changes. On day 56 of the experiment, eight birds per treatment were randomly selected from each of the replicates, starved overnight and slaughtered to evaluate carcass characteristics and internal organs. There was no significant difference (p>0.05) at starter and finisher phases in carcass yield and cut parts. Results were also comparable across treatments on all parameters for internal organs. Additionally, no effect of enzymes supplementation was recorded. Thus feeding broiler chickens with up to 14.30% of FFPFM with or without enzymes resulted in no deleterious effects on carcass characteristic and internal organs parameters.

Keywords: full fat palm fruit meal, enzymes supplementation, broiler chickens, cellulose digestion, carcass characteristics