EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE ATTRIBUTES OF BROILER CHICKENS FED VARYING LEVELS OF LOCAL FISH MEAL DIETS

Abstract

Forty-nine days experiment was carried out at poultry unit of Bauchi State College of Agriculture to evaluate the performance of broiler chickens fed varying levels of local fish meal (LFM) diets. Five experimental diets were formulated for both starter (23% cp) and the finisher (20%cp) phases. Coded as diets 1 (0%) 2 (25%), 3(50%), 4 (75%) and 5(100%). Two hundred and ten (210) broiler chickens were randomly allotted to five dietary treatments in completely randomized design. Each treatment was replicated three times with fourteen birds per replicate. The result of this study indicated most of the performance attributes at both starter and finisher phases as well as the overall performance were not significantly influenced by the dietary levels of LFM. However, starter final weight, initial weight was significantly (P<0.05) influenced by the dietary levels of local fish meal. It can be concluded that LFM can completely replace imported one with no adverse effect on the performance attributes.