Authors : S. R. Akarte and R. B. Bahadure
Page Nos : 193-197
Description :
Abstract:
Poultry diet is composed mixture of various conventional feedstuffs such as cereal grains, soybean meal, various animal by-product meals, fats, vitamin and mineral mixture including some trace minerals. The nutritionists try to develop diets, which maximize chick growth and research interest has therefore, been awakened in the area of alternative feed resources which have comparative nutritive value in growth and structural development. Skeletal abnormalities including an increase in bone mass represent a big concern within the poultry industry as it causes considerable production problems. So the experimental attempt had been undertaken to assess the effect of supplementary diet of shell crush and dried flesh of bivalve mollusk added to conventional poultry feed in respect to digestibility and utilization of this diet fed to young chicks. Considering the bioavailability and utilization of this diet with respect to bone strength and the presence or absorption of essential minerals such calcium and phosphorus, sodium and potassium in the bones of the chicks fed with supplementary molluscan diet were estimated. This study was conducted to establish the nutritive value of true metabolizable energy, apparent metabolizable energy and body composition. It was observed that our supplementary feed is easily accepted by the all experimental and control chicks without any abnormality in skeletal development and bone strength
Keywords: Molluscan feed, Chicks, Bone minerals.
