UNPEELED CASSAVA ROOT MEAL IN BROILERS DIET: THE EFFECT OF PROTEIN REDUCTION AND FREE AMINO ACIDS SUPPLEMENTATION ON PERFORMANCE, BLOOD PARAMETERS AND CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS

ABSTRACT

A feeding trial was conducted in a completely randomized design to evaluate the overall performance, blood constituents and carcass analysis of 5-day old Marshal broiler chicks that are fed with different diets; maize diet with and without AA supplements and unpeeled cassava root meal (UCRM) diet with and without AA supplements; of four replicates each and 10 chicken per replicate. The birds were assigned to these diets; feed, and water was given ad-libitum throughout the experiment. The experiment lasted for 7weeks. Feeds given were recorded and feed intake and weight gain were determined weekly. Data on overall performance, blood constituents and carcass quality were obtained. The data was subjected to analysis of variance and means were separated using new Duncan’s multiple range tests (1995). The interactive effect of the diet showed that the feed conversion ratio of the birds that consumed the control diet with amino acid supplement was significantly (p0.05). The interactive effect of the diets was only significant (p