Meals from woody forage plants and palm fruit in the diet of broilers

Abstract

The work was conducted at the Research Center Santa Lucía, of the University Institute of la Paz, from Colombia, with 240 broiler chicken of the Cobb Avían 48^® breed in their finishing stage. The objective was to evaluate the productive and economic response when including alternative feedstuffs such as 10 % meal from woody forage plants and oil palm fruit in the conventional diet. A completely randomized design was used, with four treatments of three replicas each and 20 animals per replica. The treatments were: T0: 100 % commercial concentrate feed; T1: 10 % mulberry Morus alba (L.) meal and 90 % commercial concentrate feed; T2: 10 % Gliricidia sepium (Jacq.) Kunth meal and 90 % commercial concentrate feed; and T3: 10 % ground oil palm Elaeis guineensis (Jacq.) fruit and 90 % commercial concentrate feed. No significant statistical differences were found among the treatments for the variables: weight gain, intake, conversion index and viability. The weight gains (g/bird) fluctuated between 1 388,8 (T0) and 1 037,0 (T1). The incomes, net cash profit, profit margin, net profit per animal and benefit/cost (B/C) ratio, were higher in treatments T2 and T3. The viability was high in all the treatments. It is concluded that the inclusion of these meals from woody forage plants in the conventional diet of broilers is feasible, because the productive results are not affected, while the inclusion of oil palm fruit turned out to be the best economic alternative.