Effect of Dietary Inclusion of Sunflower Meal on Performance, Carcass Traits, Litter Moisture and Economic Efficiency of Broiler Chickens

Abstract

An experiment was designed to investigate the influence of different levels of dietary inclusion of sunflower meal on broiler's productive performance, serum lipid profile, carcass traits, litter moisture and economic efficiency. One hundred and twenty, day-old Cobb broiler chicks were assigned randomly into 5 equal groups, each contained 24 chicks in three replicate pens (8 chicks/pen). Group 1 was fed on basal diet without sunflower meal and kept as a control group, while groups from 2 to 5 were fed on diets contained 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10% sunflower meal, respectively. Birds individual weights and pen feed consumed were determined for each feeding period for determining the average body weight (BW), average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR). At the trial end, a total of six birds from each group were picked randomly, slaughtered and the visceral organs (liver, gizzard, heart and spleen) plus fat pad were separately weighed for calculating the dressing percentage and the percentage of internal organs relative to carcass weight. Furthermore, litter moisture percentage and economic efficiency were calculated at the trial end. The averages of BW, ADG, ADFI and FCR were not significantly differed among groups. No differences (P>0.05) were observed in the serum lipid parameters and carcass traits among experimental groups. However, the spleen percentage was significantly higher in broilers group that fed on 10% sunflower meal in comparison to those fed on 2.5, 5 and 7.5 sunflower meal, while the litter moisture percentage was not significantly affected. The best economic efficiency was reported in broilers group fed on 10% sunflower meal but the difference did not reach the significance level. It is concluded that levels up to 10% of sunflower meal can be successfully incorporated in broiler chicken diets.

Assessing the Viability of Incorporating Sunflower Meal and Roselle Seed Meal as Unconventional Protein Sources in the Diets of Japanese Quails on Growth Performance, Carcass Characteristics, Serum Metabolites, Gene Expression, and Economic Efficienc

“…Based on economic efficacy indicators such as feed cost/ TC, TR/TC, NP/TC, TC/TR, and NP/TR, when SFM or RSM are incorporated into the diet resulted in better results than the control group as they had lower feed costs and TC with higher TR and NP. It is consistent with the outcomes of Kamel et al [79] and Attia et al [80] who found that adding non-conventional feed resources to quail diets increased their efficiency.…”

Effect of adding sunflower seeds in broiler diet on serum lipids profile and some productive performance

“…The result of this study disagree with Fiky et al, (2020) they showed that adding linseed or sunflower oils have significantly (P ≤ 0.05) increased cholesterol value at 5 weeks of ages. The obtain result disagree with Attia et al, (2016) they noted that the dietary intake of different levels of sunflower meal did not reveal any significant difference (P>0.05) in the measured serum lipid parameters (total lipid, total cholesterol, high, low and very low density lipoprotein cholesterols. Even if the diet had no effect on VLDL and HDL plasma levels, the finding of higher plasma total cholesterol and phospholipids levels in chickens fed the low lipid diet compared with chickens fed the high lipid diet suggests that the lipid composition of lipoproteins was affected by the dietary energy source as diets were isoenergetic and isoproteic and had no effect on the amount of feed ingested ( Baéza et al, 2015)…”

Sunflower Meal Inclusion Rate and the Effect of Exogenous Enzymes on Growth Performance of Broiler Chickens

“…Nevertheless, there are many cases in which enzyme supplementation to SFM containing diets did not improve of all studied growth parameters [6,[27][28][29]. In some instances, exogenous enzymes use resulted in worse performance parameters [26], whereas in some studies, including ours, it resulted in improved growth performance parameters [16,[22][23][24]30]. Such discrepancies in the results recorded in literature are multifaceted, and may be attributed to the quality of SFM processing, variety of experimental birds, experimental periods (21, 35 or 42 d), and diet composition [30].…”

“…[23] reported that SFM can be used up to 20% in growing quail diets without negatively affecting performance. In their study [24], postulated that the inclusion of SFM at higher levels may necessitate the need of supplementation with synthetic lysine and oils in the diet in-order to compensate for the low metabolizable energy (ME) associated with this ingredient. However, supplementation with extra fats to rectify the low ME associated with SFM use must be done with caution, and huge attention in terms of fats storage must be exercised due to rancidity and poor pelleting quality; which may in turn necessitate the need for additional supplementation with antioxidants [14,24].…”

“…Exogenous enzymes have been used with mixed results as reported in previous studies. In some studies, growth performance parameters were worsened as a result of enzyme supplementation [8,26]; in others, it led to no improvements [6,[27][28][29], whereas in others, it led to an improvement in growth performance parameters [22][23][24]26,30]. These contrasting findings created a knowledge gap and inconsistency in the industry regarding the optimum inclusion rates of SFM in poultry diets and the best enzyme combinations for optimum results.…”