Abstract:
Sweet potato by-products have the potential to be energy feed ingredient for poultry, but limited nutrient digestibility data exists. This study determined the nitrogen corrected apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn) of raw sweet potato (SP), cooked sweet potato (CSP) and sweet potato fries (SPF) for broiler chickens. The experiment had a completely randomized design with 120 Ross-308 male broiler chickens distributed to 20 battery cages having six birds per cage and five replicate cages per treatment. Dietary treatments were a basal grower diet and three sweet potato meal SP, CSP and SPF substituted diets. Birds were fed a common starter diet with 3050 Kcal per kg DM metabolizable energy and 23% protein for the first 14 days then birds were given the test diets for seven days. No differences (P>0.05) existed in gross energy digestibility coefficients among test ingredients. The SPF had the highest DM, CP and AMEn digestibility coefficients. The AMEn for SPF, CSP, and SP were 4721, 3640 and 3263 kcal per kg DM respectively. In conclusion, AME of sweet potato by-products can vary, and some of this variation may be due to the processing methods used to create the ingredient. |
