ABSTRACT

Ninety (90) 40 week old laying hens of Lowman Brown strain were used in an experiment to determine the effect of replacing dietary maize meal with composite cassava meal on the performance of laying birds. The birds were. randomly allocated to five groups of 18 birds each .. ~ach group was further divided into three replicates of six (6) birds each. Five iso-proteinous diets were formulated such that a practical layer diet which served as the control diet (diet 1) contained maize as the only energy source while diet 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively contain composite cassava meal at 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% replacement of maize in the experimental diet. The birds were given feed and water ad libitum. The experiment lasted 10 weeks. Under performance characteristics, a·verage daily feed intake, and feed conversion/dozen egg showed significant differences among treatment means. Birds fed diet 5(40%CCM) had the highest (P<0.05) intake while there were no clear differences (P>0.05) among the intake of birds fed diets 1-4. And feed conversion ratio {FCR) of 40% CCM group was poorer (P<0.05) than that of . . . 0% CCM group but statistical the same (P>0.05) with that of 10, 20 and 30% CCM groups. There were 'no significant differences among treatment means in all the external egg qualities . In the internal egg qualities, only the yolk weight showed significant differences_ among treatment means. Birds fed diet 5 had eggs of lower (P<0.05) yolk weight than birds fed diets 2 and 4 but similar to those of birds fed . . yolk weight than birds fed diets 2 and 4 but similar to those of birds fed . . ' . . diets 1 and 3. This suggests that the diets containing the various inclusion levels of 0, 10, 20, 30, . . . . and 40% CCM were equally utilized by the laying hens.