Utilisation of dried cuttle fish (Sepia officialis) waste silage in layer duck ration
Loading...
Files
Date
2005
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of Poultry Science, College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Mannuthy
Abstract
An experiment was conducted in Department of Poultry Science, Kerala Agricultural University during the period from June to November, 2004 to assess the utilization of dried cuttle fish waste silage (CFWS) on replacement of dried fish (DF) in indigenous layer duck ration. At the age of 24 weeks, 96 layer ducks were housed under cage system of rearing with two ducks per cage. They were divided into three groups T1, T2 and T3 comprising 32 ducks per group with 8 replicates having four ducks per replicate. The three groups of ducks were fed with dietary combinations of 10 per cent DF and zero per cent dried CFWS (T1), 5 per cent DF and 11.45 per cent dried CFWS (T2) and 22.9 per cent dried CFWS replacing DF completely (T3) and the diets were made isocaloric and isonitrogenous.
The first egg in the flock was laid in groups T1 and T2 at 169 days of age and ages at 10 and 50 per cent production were also early in T1. The overall duck housed number and duck housed per cent production during 25-44 weeks of age were 75.06 and 53.61 in T1 which was though numerically superior was statistically non significant compared with T2 and T3. The overall mean daily feed consumption was 166.36,166.80 and 168.35 g per duck which were statistically comparable between various treatment groups. The overall feed conversion ratio per dozen eggs was 3.58, 4.23 and 4.32 and per kg egg mass was 4.65, 5.14 and 5.22 in T1, T2 and T3 respectively which was non-significant (P<0.05). The overall mean egg weight (EW) was 63.80, 67.74 and 67.09 g in T1, T2 and T3 having significantly lower EW in T1, whereas it was comparable between T2 and T3.
The lower DHN in groups fed dried CFWS was compensated by higher mean egg weight and thereby total egg mass in the study periodwas maintained in the cuttle fish waste silage fed groups. All the internal egg quality traits namely, albumen index, yolk index, percent shell and shell thickness did not differ between treatment groups during five, 28-day periods. Livability was excellent in all groups. Economically, though control group showed higher feeding cost, due to higher egg number it returned higher margin of return over feed cost of rupees 0.26 per egg, whereas it was Rs. 0.04 in T2 and Rs.0.14 in T3.
Thus, it was concluded that dried cuttle fish waste silage can be included at 11.5 and 22.9 per cent levels in duck layer rations with significantly higher mean egg weight as 50 and 100 per cent replacement for dried fish protein under cage system of rearing of ducks.
Description
PG
Keywords
null