Carcass and Internal Organs Characteristics of Broiler Chickens Fed Soybean Diet

Abstract

Soybean (Glycine max) is a principal vegetable protein source in the animal feed industry in Nigeria, including the poultry feed industry, but because of the fact that it contains various anti-nutritional factors, the raw full-fat cannot be used in poultry nutrition. The present study was carried out to examine the carcass, and internal organ characteristics of broiler chickens fed a soybean diet. A total of eight hundred and four unsexed one-day-old broiler chickens (Arbor Acre) with an average weight of 45 ± 1.1 g were used in 56 days feeding trial to observe the effect of different processing methods of soybean on broiler chicken carcass and organs characteristics including; liver, spleen, lungs, crop, bile, pancreas, heart, intestine and empty gizzard. There were four dietary treatments (T1-T4), each containing soybean meal as the control diet, dried-boiled soybean, roasted soybean and dried-fermented soybean. Each treatment was replicated three times with 67 broiler chickens per replicate, giving 201 broiler chickens per treatment. The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized design. The starter diet was fed for 4 weeks and the finisher diet for 4 weeks. At the end of the feeding trial, 15 broiler chickens were randomly selected for sampling and collecting the data. The weight of the internal organs and carcass characteristics showed no significant difference in the treatment groups, but the fermented method showed the highest value in the live weight (2075.00 g), eviscerated weight (1532.46 g), and breast weight (483.72 g) compared to other carcass parameters in other treatments including the control diet. It is, therefore, concluded that for optimal broiler growth, the fermented processing method of soybean is recommended. Keywords: Broilers chicken, Carcass characteristic, Diet, Internal organ, Processed soybean