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 .
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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.
