INFLUENCE OF DIETARY FERMENTED CORN-COB ON THE PERFORMANCE OF BROILER CHICKENS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of fermented corncob (FCC) on the performance of broiler chickens. A total of 240 broiler chicks were randomly allotted to five dietary treatments, replicated three times with 16 birds each in completely randomized design. The chicks were fed five different experimental diets. FCC was used to replace maize at 0%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% for the dietary treatment groups 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. The result indicated significant difference (P<0.05) on feed intake of the dietary groups, T4 showed high trend of feed consumption (127.62g) while the lowest feed intake was recorded in T1 (114.89g). The body weight gain was highest (47.00g) in T2 dietary group which was statistically similar to T3 and lowest body weight gain was observed in T1 and T5 (41.97g). Final body weight showed significant difference (P<0.05) among dietary treatments where T2 (2125.00g) had the highest value and T4 (1891.67g) recorded the least. Higher FCR value was observed in T4 (3.19) dietary group which indicated low feed conversion efficiency. The study concluded that fermented corncob can quantitatively replace maize up to 40% of the diet without any adverse effect on the performance and of broiler chickens. It is therefore recommended that at 20% level of inclusion, FCC can replace maize and produce a better performance than the control.