College of Animal Science and Animal Production, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, P.M.B. 7267, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria
Akinmutimi, A.H., College of Animal Science and Animal Production, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, P.M.B. 7267, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria; Aligwara, A.O., College of Animal Science and Animal Production, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, P.M.B. 7267, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria; Abasiekong, S.F., College of Animal Science and Animal Production, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, P.M.B. 7267, Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria
The effect of cooked and toasted lima bean meal in boiler finisher diets was assessed using seventy five (75) Anak broiler birds. The beans were cooked for ninety (90) minutes, oven dried at 60oC and toasted to brownness. It was quantitatively used to replace soybean at 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% levels of inclusion. The birds aged twenty eight (28) days were divided into five (5) treatments and each treatment replicated three (3) times. The birds were assigned to the diets in a completely randomized design experiment. The result of growth performance showed that the mean feed intake values showed no significant (P>0.05) difference for all the diets while there were significant (P<0.05) differences for values of weight gain and feed conversion ratio. The values are 42.8, 46.6, 41.2, 35.4, 23.3 and 3.45, 2.70, 2.84, 3.27, 4.93 for weight gain and feed conversion ratio respectively. The cut- parts showed that the birds on the test diets have values comparable to those on the control diet Based on the above results, normal market live weight and cost per kilogram weight gain, 5% cooked and toasted lima bean meal can quantitatively replaced soybean meal without adverse effect on the growth performance and carcass quality values and hence recommended. © Asian Network for Scientific Information, 2008.