Mollison, B., W. Guenftr, And B.R Boycott, 1984. Abdominal Fat Deition And Sudden Death -Syndrome In. Broilers: The Effect Of Restricted Intake, Early Caloric ...
967 Middle East Journal of Applied Sciences, 4(4): 967-982, 2014 ISSN: 2077-4613
Mitigating Heat Stress in Broilers: 1- Effect of Feed Restriction and Early Heat Acclimation on Productive Performance Shamma, T. A., H. H. Khalifa, A. A. El-Shafei and M. S. Abo-Gabal Animal Production, Dept. Faculty of Agric. Al-Azhar University, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt. ABSTRACT A trial was carried out to examine and evaluate the effects of early heat acclimation and different periods of feed restriction on growth performance, carcass characteristics, meat chemical composition and economic efficiency of broiler chicks reared under heat stress. Four hundred and eighty on week old Cobb500 broiler were randomly divided into 8 treatments with 3 replicates in each with 20 broiler chicks in each replicate. The chicks in T1 were fed ad-libtum and served as control. Whereas, the birds in T2 were exposed to early heat acclimation at 7 day and other treatments (T3 to T8) were submitted to feed restriction program (fasting) for different periods i.e, chicks in T3, T4 and T5 were fasting for 4 hrs daily (for 1, 2 and 3 weeks, respectively). While, T6, T7 and T8 were fasting for 6 hrs daily (for 1, 2 and 3 weeks, respectively). After that all birds were fed ad-libtum up to the end of the experiment at 6 week of age. Birds were fed with starter and finisher diets, live body weight (LBW), body weight gain (BWG), feed intake (FI), feed conversion ratio (FCR) and dead birds were recorded every week. At the end of the experiment (42 day) slaughter test was performed and meat samples were stored until subsequent chemical analysis. Data were statistically analyzed to find out the effect of different treatment on growth of growing broiler chicks. The results showed that, feed restriction and early heat acclimation during the starter stage had a negative effect on LBW of chicks. However, at the end (6 week of age) T2, T3 and T4 get full catch up growth and T3 was significantly heavier in LBW and superpassed T1 which ate ad-libtum. Results of BWG take the same trend. Furthermore, feed restriction decreased significantly (P
