Nutritive evaluation of different energy sources in broiler chicken diets under the tropical climate of Nigeria

This study was aimed at evaluating the nutritive value of different sources of energy in broiler chicken diets on the growth performance and haematological parameters of broiler chickens. Five isonitrogenous and isocaloric diets (23.17% CP; 2831 Kcal/ME; 21.73% CP; 2929Kcal/ME) for the broiler starter (0-4 weeks) and finisher phases (5-8 weeks), respectively were formulated. Treatment 1 is the control diet while treatments 2, 3, 4 and 5were sorghum, pearl millet, cassava and sweet potatoes based diets, respectively. A total of 225, 1 day-old NAPRI X broiler chicks were randomly allotted to the five treatments with three replicates each in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Data were subjected to ANOVAα0.05 . The results showed that final bodyweights (503.44 g and 2302.77 g), feed intake (819.67 g and 3073.70 g) and weight gained (453.61 g and 1892.07 g) were significantly (P