Effects of Dietary Levels of Doum Palm Pulp Meal (Hyphaene thabaica) Supplementation on the Performance of Broiler Chickens

The study was carried out to evaluate the effect of Doum palm pulp meal (Hyphaene thabaica)supplementation on growth performance in broiler chickens. A total of two hundred day old unsexed strain of Anak 2000 broiler chicks were subjected to 49-day study period. Chicks were randomly allotted to five dietary treatments with 10 birds per replicate and 40 birds per treatment in a completely randomized design (CRD). The levels of Doum palm inclusion were 0.0, 5.0, 7.5, 10.0 and 12.5% coded as (treatment 1 to 5) T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 respectively. The birds in all groups were reared under deep litter system; feed and water were provided ad-libitum. Dietary Doum palm was not significant (P>.05) in terms of weight gain and feed intake in the same vein, the feed conversion ratio was not significantly altered at the starter phase of the study. At the finisher phase weight gain and feed conversion ratio were significant at (P<.01) and (P = .05) respectively, while daily feed intake was not affected. Birds on T4 had the highest daily weight gain (43.75g) while those on T1 had the lowest (33.97g). The same trend was elicited for feed conversion ratio with T4 haven the inferior value (1.22) while T1 was (1.44). The economic analysis showed significant variation in feed cost per kg in terms of broiler production across treatment groups. Feed cost kg/gain appeared to be higher in T1 (₦ 516.17) while lowest in T4 (₦ 267.92) this showed that increased level of Doum palm pulp meal will not increase the cost of production. Doum palm supplementation in broiler diets could improve growth performance especially in the level of 10.0% that was found to be better than the control and other treatment groups. It is therefore recommended that 10% level of inclusion of Doum palm pulp meal could be used in compounding broiler feeds.