Abstract:
A total of 8883, day-old broiler chicks of Arbor Acres (S1- 2706), Cobb 500 (S2- 3308) and
Lohmann (S3- 2869) were assigned to 3 treatment groups having 3 replications in each strain for
28 days of the age of the bird to identify a suitable strain for profitable broiler production. The
birds were fed the starter diet (0-14 days) containing 22% CP and 2900 Kcal ME/kg and the
finisher diet (15-28 days) containing 20% CP and 3000 Kcal ME/kg. The birds were reared on a
littered floor management system providing standard management given by the breeder. The
body weight, feed intake, mortality, production cost, and net profit did not differ among the
strains (p?0.05), except for the feed conversion ratio (FCR) (p<0.01). The lowest FCR was
observed in S3, followed by S1 and S3, respectively. However, strain S2 tended to have higher
body weight and feed intake compared to S1 and S3. Evidently but not significantly, Strain S3
had the highest production cost and lowest net profit among the strains. The strain S1 was
comparable to S2 in terms of net profit. There was a tendency to increase meat yield traits and a
decrease in blood lipid profiles in S2 compared to S1 or S3. Therefore, strains S2 and S1
performed better than S3 in terms of growth, net profit, meat yield, and lipid profile content of
the blood. Hence, Cobb 500 (S2) was found to be superior to Arbor Acres (S1) considering the
overall performance. |
