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Abstract

A feeding trial was conducted for a period of 5 weeks with 160 day-old Starbro broiler chicks with a Randomized Block Design with 4 dietary treatments. There were 40 chicks per treatment. Each treatment was replicated in 4 blocks with 10 chicks in each block. The dietary treatments were normal maize plus lysine and methionine (control diet), normal maize without lysine and methionine, Pacific 11 maize without lysine and methionine and Quality Protein Maize (QPM) without lysine and methionine. All other ingredients used in the diet were similar and all diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous that contained around 2975 Kcal ME/kg DM and 21.5% crude protein. At 5 weeks of age, 2 broilers from each block (8 from each treatment) was randomly selected considering average body weight and slaughtered to analyze the meat yield traits. The QPM contained only slightly higher protein and lysine than Pacific 11. Other amino acid profiles of QPM were similar to that of Pacific 11. There were no differences (p>0.05) in feed intake, water intake, total gain, feed conversion efficiency and mortality of broilers among the dietary treatments. Liveweight at slaughter (p<0.01), dressing percent (p<0.05) and breast meat (p<0.001) were highest, but heart (p<0.05) and digestive tract weight (p<0.05) were lowest in diet fed maize plus lysine and methionine. However, liveweight at slaughter and dressing percent did not differ (p>0.05) among the treatments without lysine and methionine. Morphological characteristics such as relationship between length of drumstick and carcass characteristics was promising. Morphological characteristics played a vital role in selecting broiler strains for productive purposes and might have great impact using a scale only.

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