ABSTRACT

The evaluation of toasted Mucuna sloanei meal as feed ingredient in broiler diets was carried out using growth performannce, carcass quality, anti-nutritional factors and economics of diet as parameters. A total of 120 day-old marshal broilers were used for this trial. They were allocated into four treatments having three replicates with 10 birds per replicate each in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) experiment. The Mucuna sloanei seeds were toasted, milled and incorporated into their diets at varying levels. (0%, 50/0, 10%, 15%). Four iso-caloric (2800Kca1/Kg M.E) and iso-nitrogeneous (22.5% CP) feed were formulated. Diet 1 was purely soybean based diet (control diet) while the test feedstuff (processed) replaced soybean at varying levels of 5%, 10%, and 15% in diets 2, 3, and 4 respectively. The experiment lasted for 56 days. Data were collected on quantity of feed given, the left over, weight gain, number of animals housed weekly from where other parameters like feed conversion ratio, percentage mortality were calculated. Also the economics of the diet was determined. At the end of the trial, two birds per replicate ere randomly selected and bled by severing the jugular vein for cut-parts and organ weight. Data collected were subjected to analysis of variance and significant means separated by Duncan's Multiple Range Test. Proximate composition of the test feedstuff, crude protein of 28.96%, crude fat (5.61%), crude fibre (8.11%), Ash (4.55%), Dry matter (90.50%), NFE (28.85%) and Gross energy (3.94Kcal/g). presence of ant nutritional factors such as L-Dopa(3.61%), Tannin (0.17%), HCN(8.27%) were confirmed. For the growth performance, control diet was superior to others with the final weight gain/bird of 1.75Kg, T2 (1.34Kg) that were significantly higher than others. Also TI had 0° mortality and the least feed conversion ratio value (0.05). For cut-parts T2 had higher values for the prime parts such as the thigh, drumstick, back-cut and wing is recommended. While TI had the highest value for gross margin (41625a) as opposed to others, T2 (209.79'), T3 (14.73), T4 (- 143.22(1) making it a superior diet in terms of economics of diet. The overall results showed that the test feedstuff even at 5% dietary level of inclusion could not produce good performance, so there is need to try other processing methods.