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Sudan Journal of Agricultural Research

 Feed restriction and compensatory growth on broiler chickens

I. Effect of age at feed restriction

Sayda A. Mohammed and Hayder O. Abdalla¹
 

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the phenomenon of compensatory growth in broiler chickens (Ross strain). A completely randomized design experiment with a total of 225 unsexed chicks was used to study the effect of age at feed restriction on compensatory growth. Three treatments including two ages of restriction (15-21 and 22-28 day of age (DOA) and a control were used. Restricted treatments were referred to as R 15-21 and R 22-28. Restricted chickens were fed on 50% of the feed consumed by the control for seven days continuously which resulted significantly (P<0.05) in light chickens compared with the control that was fed ad-libitum. Compensatory growth was found in all realimented chickens since the first week of realimentation. However, the early-restricted chickens (R 15-22) had significantly (P<0.05) heavier final body weight compared with the late restricted group (R 22-28). By the end of the experiment both restricted groups showed better feed conversion ratio (FCR), heavy carcass weight, low abdominal fat pad (AFP) weight, high dressing percentage and low mortality rate compared with the control group.


 

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Sudan Journal of Agricultural Research Vol. 7 (2006) PP. 61-66