The effects of feed removal during the day on some production traits and blood parameters sf broilers

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of feed removal during the day on broiler performance and some blood parameters. Live material of the experiment consisted of 600 mixed sex day-old commercial (Avian Farm) broiler chicks. The experiment was held in six rooms with a randomly allocated control group and two treatment groups and their replicates. The birds were full fed ad libitum in the control group while the feeders were removed for three and six hours per day for the treatment I and treatment II groups respectively between the 5th and 37th days. Average live weights of the control, treatment I and treatment II groups at 40 days of age were 1992.5, 1918.0 and 1940.0 g, respectively. The differences between the control group and the two others were statistically significant (P<0.05). Feed conversion ratios were 2.03, 2.08 and 2.00 for the groups, respectively. For the same groups, the average figures for the carcass weight as a percentage of live weight were calculated to be 68.68, 67.88 and 69.15%, respectively. For the groups haematocrit values (%) were 28.57, 29.14 and 30.50, haemoglobin values (g/100 ml) were 5.58, 5.88 and 6.78, and red blood cell numbers (cell/mm(3)) were 2.27x10(6), 2.49x10(6) and 2.35x10(6), respectively.