| Abstrakt: |
Broiler chicks have been acknowledged as a viable recourse for achieving sustainable and rapid harvest of high quality animal protein. However, the major constraint is capital-intensive and exalted magnitude of protein (30-35%) constituent in broiler ration. Fishmeal is an excellent source of protein for poultry. But, it is expensive as well as repulsive to the consumer because of obnoxious flavor of chicken meat fed on fishmeal integrated ration. In contrast, edible insects are extremely cheap alternative sources of dietary protein, but the impact of its inclusion in ration on carcass traits has been sparsely tried in broiler chicken. This paper propels the use of grasshopper (Zonocerus variegatus Linnacus) meal in poultry diet, which is abundantly and cheaply available in Nigeria, but has not been adopted by poultry farmers due to technological timidity. This study depicts the effect of replacement of grasshopper meal (GM) with fishmeal (FM) on carcass characteristics in broiler chicks. For this experiment, seventy two (72) twoweek old Arbor acre broiler chicks were assigned three dietary treatments (T1, T2 and T3) at different displacement rates of GM with FM. Treatment A (T1) constituted conventional diet with 0% GM and 10% FM and served as the control. Treatment B (T2) diet contained 5% GM and 5% FM. Treatment C (T3) diet contained 10% GM and 0% FM. Proximate analysis revealed that GM contained 7.58% moisture, 52.5% crude protein, 10.55% crude fibre, 27.1% crude fat, 4.25% ash and 5.6% NFE. Twenty four broiler chicks were randomly assigned to each of the three dietary treatments at the rate of eight chicks per replicate and three replicates per experimental unit in a Completely Randomized Design. The birds were put under experiment for eight weeks. During this period, the birds were subjected to similar husbandry and sanitation practices. After eight weeks, live weight, de-feathered carcass weight, eviscerated carcass weight, weights of carcass joints and internal organs were analyzed using appropriate statistical models. The birds under Treatment C (T3) attained significantly (P=0.05) higher body weight (2340.12±0.86 g), defeathered carcass weight (2260.15±4.18 g) and eviscerated carcass weight (1910.1±10.1), so also the weights of carcass joints like Head, Shank, Drumstick, Neck, Wings and Breast along with important internal organs like Gizzards, Lungs, Heart, Kidneys and Liver, compared to the birds under treatment B and treatment A. Moreover, the weights for all these characteristics showed significant improvement (P=0.05) with increase in the level of GM from treatment A (0% GM) to treatment B (5% GM) and then to treatment C (10% GM). It is inferred that incorporation of grasshopper meal to an extent of 10% in diet significantly improved the weights of carcass weight, weights of carcass joints and important organs in Arbor acre Broiler chicks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
