Influence of Various Growth Patterns on Performance of Ross 308
Broilers
N. Eila1, AG. Lavvaf1, T. Farahvash2*
and A. Zarei1
1Department
of Animal Science,
Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj; 2Department
of Animal Science, Shabestar Branch, Islamic Azad University,
Shabester, Iran
*Corresponding Author: t_farahvash@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract
In order to compare the effect of different growth patterns (slow, rapid and
compensatory), 300 one-day old ROSS male broiler chicks were randomly selected.
Chicks were subjected to 4 treatments i.e., (T1-slow grower diet;
T2-compensatory grower diet; T3-NRC (1994) based grower diet and T4- growth diet
based on Ross catalog based grower diet) having 5 replicates (15 chicks per each
replicate). Performance traits were: weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion
ratio, carcass characteristics and economic traits. Treatments had significant
effect on weight gain, feed conversion ratio and feed intake (P<0.05) and T4 had
the highest weight gain and feed conversion ratio in chicks. Carcass
characteristics were similar for all treatment groups. The percentage of liver
was higher in T1 in comparison to T3 (P<0.05). The cost of a kilogram of diet
was the highest in T3 group that resulted in the lowest economic efficiency,
however, other treatments had better efficiencies (P<0.05). T1, T2 and T3 had
similar growth performance, carcass traits and economic traits. It can be
concluded from the results that growth diet based on Ross breeding catalog had
the highest production index with low cost of feed. On the basis of results of
this study, it can be recommended that Ross catalog based diets result in
compensatory growth with higher economic indexes.