DIETARY EFFECTS OF HYDROPONIC WHEAT SPROUTED FODDER ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF TURKEY

Abstract

The present study determined nutritional composition and investigated the effect and economic value of hydroponic wheat sprouted fodder (HWSF) replaced by commercial concentrate feed (CCF) on growth performance of turkey. The study was conducted at the Advance Animal Research Farm of the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Science, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU), Dinajpur, Bangladesh. A total of seventy-five poults (8-weeks old) having uniform body weight (1297.88g/poults)were selected and randomly assigned into five dietary treatment groups (T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5), each group consisting of 3 replications having 15 birds in each. T1 considered as the control group and fed only CCF, whereT2, T3, T4, and T5groups fed 95, 90, 85 and 80% CCF along with 5, 10, 15 and 20% hydroponic wheat sprouted fodder, respectively. The percentage of dry matter (DM), ash, organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), crude fibre (CF), ether extract (EE) and nitrogen free extract (NFE) on dry matter basis contents of hydroponic wheat, maize and sesbania sprouted fodder were 8.64, 14.79, 9.46, 4.09, 2.50, 3.41, 95.91, 97.5, 96.6, 18.10, 10.92, 37.26, 3.40, 5.30, 7.21, 3.29, 2.94, 3.71, 71.12, 78.34 and 48.41%, respectively. The amount of DM was significantly higher (P<0.01) in hydroponic maize sprouted fodder than hydroponic wheat and sesbania sprouted fodder and the amount of CP was significantly higher (P<0.01) in hydroponic sesbania sprouted fodder than hydroponic wheat and maize sprouted fodder. However, NFE was significantly differed (P<0.05) among the hydroponic wheat, maize and sesbania sprouted fodder. But the amount of Ash, OM, CF and EE were not significantly differed among the hydroponic wheat, maize and sesbania sprouted fodder. Total DM intake was almost similar among the groups of turkey T1 (74.44 g/d), T2 (76.94 g/d), T3 (79.35 g/d), T4 (79.18 g/d) and T5 (81.53 g/d).Live weight of turkey among the dietary treatment groups T1 (2074.86 g), T2 (2130.4 g), T3 (2125.75 g) and T4 (2085.53 g) were viii increased except T5 (1959.4 g) groups. The live weight gain was almost similar in the turkey of T2 (29.55 g/d), T3 (29.26 g/d), T4 (28.44 g/d) and T1 (27.69 g/d) groups except T5 (23.85 g/d) group. The feed efficiency of dietary treatment groups T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 were 2.68, 2.60, 2.70, 2.78 and 3.42, respectively. The best performance regarding feed efficiency was observed in T2 (2.60) group compared to other groups. On the other hand, cost benefit analysis showed higher benefit in T2, T3 and T4 than in T1 and T5 group. Therefore, the overall results revealed that dietary supplementation of HWSF up to15% may improve live weight, feed efficiency of turkey as well as reduce total feed cost. ey words: Turkey, hydroponic wheat sprouted fodder, growth performance