Effect of Partial Replacement of Corn with Date pits in Broilers Diet on Performance And Meat Quality

Abstract

Saudi Arabia does not produce poultry feeds and relies on costly foreign supplies for that matter. There is need to reduce production costs and dependence on foreign supplies by utilization of cheap local feed resources. This study investigates the possibility of replacing part of corn in boilers diet by locally produced ,cheap and abundant alternative; namely date pits. The study falls into two parts .In the first part date pits were treated with 3 , 6 , 9 or 12% NaOH solution to improve digestibility. Both treated date pits (TDP) and untreated date pits (UDP) contained low crude protein (51-57 g/kg) and high crude fiber (149.7-188.2 g/kg) . NaOH treatment improved dry matter digestibility(DMD) . DMD coefficient of UDP was 0.137 and that of TDP varied between 0.187-0.198 .DMD increased progressively with increase a strength of NaOH solution used to treat date pits . In the second part of the study 3% and 6% NaOH treated date pits were used to partially replace corn in broilers diet and were included at the rates of 10, 20 ,30 or 40% of the diet. The eight experimental diets and the control diet that contained 40% corn and no date pits were assigned at random to nine groups of 44 day-old Hybro commercial strain broiler chicks each. Each group contained four replicates of 11 chicks. The diets were fed for six weeks. Overall mean feed consumption on the control diet was 3042 g , feed conversion ratio was 1.807 units , survival rate was 95.46 % and the mean final weight was the heaviest . The corresponding values for chicks raised on diets containing treated date pits were 3151 g , 2.582 units and 85.5% , respectively. Carcass composition and eating quality of the meat was not affected by the treatment. The highest financial return was obtained on the control diet whereas the best financial return of date pits containing diets represented 0.77 of the returns displayed by the control group . 11 NaOH treated date pits seemed to be not the ideal alternative to corn in broilers diets according to the present study. More research studies need to be devoted to develop new effective date pits treatment technologies that can allow maximum utilization of its stored energy and ultimately replace pricey imported energy feeds such as corn.