Growth Performance of Colored broilers given Commercial Feeds Supplemented with Sweet Potato Leaves during Finishing Period

Abstract

The study on the growth performance of colored broilers given commercial feeds supplemented with chopped sweet potato leaves was conducted from January 2015 to March 2015. Specifically, the study was conducted to determine the final weight, gain in weight, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, and feed cost to produce a unit gain in weight of broilers when given commercial feeds supplemented with chopped sweet potato leaves (SPL). A total of 120, 29 days old colored chickens, were distributed randomly into three treatments as follows: T0-pure commercial feeds, T1-commercial feeds plus 10 grams of sweet potato leaves/bird/day, T2-commercial feeds plus 20 grams of sweet potato leaves/bird/day. The test feedstuffs were given to the birds on a restricted basis and also the commercial feeds. Results revealed that there were no significant differences between treatments in the initial weights. The overall mean initial weight of the birds was 0.798kg. Higher ADGs were obtained from the colored birds given 10g and 20g of SPL/bird/day with respective means of 0.0334kg and 0.0348kg compared to the control birds with a mean ADG of 0.0317kg. Birds given SPL supplementation were less efficient in converting feeds to a unit gain in weight which resulted to higher feed costs. Based on the result of the study, it is therefore concluded that supplementing broiler ration with chopped sweet potato leaves at the levels of 10-20g/bird/day improved the gains in weight of the birds. However, higher feed costs were also incurred due to the added cost of sweet potato leaves.