THE EFFECT OF FEEDING FREQUENCY ON THE PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF THE BROILER BREEDER FLOCKS
Lumturi Sena, Sabah Sena
Department of Animal Production, Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania
lumturisena@yahoo.com
The study was carried out in a broiler breeder flock at the age of 7 – 23 weeks. The flock was divided into two groups, which were fed according to two feeding strategies: The control group was fed once a day, while the experimental group was fed once in two days. Both groups were simultaneously monitored for the growth rate (body weight), feed conversion ratio and mortality. At the end of this study, the differences resulted to be significant for the body weight. The control group resulted to have better/heavier body weight (3.1% bigger than the standard). Once a day feeding gives the chicks the possibility for a better performance and efficiency, growing uniformly and meeting an optimal body weight at the age of 23 weeks. Although the control group has consumed 0.6% more feed/head, the feed conversion ratio (FCR) of this group is 9.5% higher than the one of the experimental group. This relates and is reflected to a better growth performance for the control group.
Keywords: broiler breeder pullets; once a day; skip a day; body weight; feed conversion ratio; feed restriction
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