Growth performance and nutrient digestibility of broiler chickens fed diets containing varying inclusion levels of dried watermelon rind at the starter phase

Abstract

Watermelon rind is one of the several unwanted by-products generated by restaurants, fruit juice producers and food industries in Nigeria that can be gotten rid of by using it as an energy source in broiler production. The growth performance and apparent nutrient digestibility of broilers fed diets containing varying inclusion levels of dried watermelon rind (DWMR) in replacement for wheat offal as source of energy and fibre at starter phase was evaluated. The dried watermelon rind was prepared by sun-drying fresh watermelon for three days and oven-dried at 50 ºC for 2 hours. The birds were randomly allocated to five (5) treatments (T1 – T5), each treatment had three replicates with ten (10) birds per replicate. The birds were fed varied levels of DWMR at 0 %, 25 %, 50 %, 75 % and 100 % in replacement of wheat offal to obtain five diets. Feed and water were provided ad-libitum throughout the 28 days study duration. Body weight, Body weight gain, Feed intake, Feed conversion ratio and apparent nutrient digestibility were measured. The results obtained on the growth performance shows no significant (P>0.05) difference of the growth parameters across treatments. However, there was significant (P<0.05) difference in the digestibility of Crude fibre, Ether extract, Ash, Nitrogen free extract and Total digestible nutrient across treatments. There was no obvious variation in dry matter and crude protein digestibility. The result of the total digestible nutrient was significantly (P<0.05) higher in T2 (92.90 %) than the T1 (84.99 %) which was the control diet. The crude fibre digestibility recorded in T2 (63.48 %) and T1 (61.09 %) is higher than T5 (43.00 %), the ether extract digestibility of T1 (96.42 %) is higher than the other groups with the lowest in T4 (95.25 %). There was depress ash digestibility in T5 (68.30 %), lower than the other groups with the highest in T1 (82.59 %). The study therefore concluded that farmers can replace wheat offal with 25 % watermelon rind in broiler starter diet without any deleterious effect in the growth performance and nutrient digestibility.