Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology

Evaluation of Prosopis juliflora pods (PJP) as unconventional feed ingredient in broilers diets was studied. An experiment with one d-old broiler chicks (n=540) was conducted from 1 to 42-d of age. There were 4 dietary treatments each with 3 replicates and contained graded levels of PJP at 0 (Control), 10 (PJP-10), 15 (PJP-15) and 20 (PJP-20) percent instead of yellow corn. Chickens fed PJP-20 diet had the highest (P<0.05) live body weight, body weight gain and better (P<0.05) feed conversion. No significant differences were noticed in dressing, breast meat and leg meat percentage among treatments. Cooking loss percent was the highest (P<0.05) for control group. Breast meat of chickens fed control diet and PJP-10 had the highest (P<0.05) pH values. While, PJP-10 and PJP-15 gave the highest (P<0.05) shear force values. Chickens fed PJP-15 and PJP-20 had the highest (P<0.05) breast meat crude protein and moisture percent. Ether extract percent and ash content were higher (P<0.05) for chickens fed control diet. With respect to gastrointestinal tract segments, chickens fed PJP-20 diet had the highest (P<0.05) segment weight. It can be concluded that PJP can replace corn by 20 percent level in the diet of broiler chickes.