Evaluation of feeding strategies for sasso and kuroiler chickens under semi-scavenging system of production in Tanzania
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Date
2022
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Sokoine university of agriculture
Abstract
Smallholder chicken farmers produce more than 60% of chicken meat and eggs in Tanzania. As the poultry industry grows, it is increasingly becoming important to focus on strategies to increase meat and egg production while considering quality and safety in order to produce and retain the ever-expanding markets. The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of breed, diet and level of feed supplementation on growth performance, egg production, feed conversion ratio, survivability, meat and egg quality of Sasso and Kuroiler chickens. The study was conducted in three separate growing phases, that is the starter phase (0–6 weeks of age), grower phase (6–20 weeks of age) and layer phase (21–40 weeks of age). One thousand sixty (1060) day-old Sasso and Kuroiler chicks were raised until 6 weeks under intensive management system with three dietary treatments. At the age of 6 weeks, a total of 960 birds (480 Sasso and 480 Kuroiler) were randomly selected from each treatment diet and assigned to four feed supplementation levels viz. 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% with two replicates having 20 birds each. Beginning week 7, all experimental birds were allowed to semi-scavenge from 6:00 am in the morning to 6:00 pm in the evening with free access to open grass area with a space 2 allowance of 1 bird/4 m. Grower rations and layer rations based on the three categories, which is commercial, medium-cost and low-cost formulation were fed from 7 to the 20stth week of age and 21st to the 40 weeks of age respectively. At the age of 20 weeks, five male chickens were randomly selected from each treatment combination and sacrificed for detailed carcass and meat quality assessments. Concurrently, four hundred and eighty female chickens aged twenty weeks were randomly assigned to 24 treatment combinations in a 2x3x4 factorial experiment with two replicate each. The treatments were breeds (Sasso and Kuroiler), diets (D1 - commercial, D2 – medium-cost and D3 - low-cost), and levels of supplementation (100%, 75%, 50% and 25%).
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Keywords
Feeding strategies, Sasso chicken production, kuroiler chicken production, Semi-scavenging production system