Influence of Dietary Multiple Phase Feeding on Growth Performance of Commercial Broiler Chicken

Abstract

The experimental trial was carried out to study the effect of multiple phase feeding on the growth performances and the economics of broiler production for a period of six weeks. Day-old chicks (n=160) were divided into two treatment groups, each containing 80 chicks with four replicates in each treatment. The birds of the control group (A) were fed prestarter, starter and finisher diets as per nutrient requirement of commercial broiler strain used in the experiment and the multiple phase feeding was followed in group-B by changing the nutrient densities (Energy, Crude protein, lysine and methionine) of diet per week. The different performance parameters were studied such as live body weight, gain in live body weight, feed conversion ratio and feed consumption at weekly interval. Mortality was recorded daily and the economics was calculated at the end of experiment. The results of experiment showed that the body weight and weight gain of broilers of group-B was significantly higher (p less than 0.05) than that of broilers of group-A during first, second, fifth and sixth week of age and also during overall duration of the experiment. Further, the feed intake of broilers of group-B was significantly higher (p less than 0.05) than that of group-A during second, fifth and sixth weeks of age and also during the overall feed intake of broilers. The Feed Conversion Ratio of broilers of group-B was significantly better (p less than 0.05) than that of group-A during fifth week and also during the overall performance. The multiple phase feeding has not put any adverse effect on percentage mortality of broilers. However, broilers fed with the multiple phase feeding showed higher net profit per bird and also per kg of body weight as compared to the broilers of control group (A).