Abstract:
This study was conducted to investigate improvmentitin production parameters that occur as a consequence of feeding two types of pre-starter diets.
Broilers chicks were fed imported pre-starter, locally manufactured pre-starter or starter diet without a pre-starter as a control diet. Body weight, feed consumption and efficiency of feed conversion were determined weekly throughout the duration of the experiment which lasted for 6 weeks.
Feeding imported pre-starter resulted in significant high body weight during the first 4 weeks, but no significant difference was observed at slaughter age, regardless of the numerically high body weight of the two groups of birds fed the pre-starter diet in comparison with the control birds. Feed intake of birds fed the imported pre-starter show a numerically high feed intake throughout the duration of the experiment, but the intake of this group was significantly high only during week 3 and4.
Feed conversion ratio for the three group of birds follow more or less a similar trend to body weight and feed intake where imported pre-starter showed numerically the efficient conversion followed be the locally pre-starter but the differences were not significant.
The results confirmed the beneficial effect of pre-starter diet on body weight gain during early stage of growth as result of increase in feed intake. The performance parameter of locally manufactured pre-starter came next to the imported one and better than that of birds fed on the control diet. This slightly low performance of the local pre-starter may be due the fact that this feed was fed as mash diet in comparison to the imported pre-started which was given in a pellet form.
