Discipline: Animal Science
The effects of feeding broilers with diets using betaine as partial replacement of dl-methionine (DLM) or methionine hydroxy analogue (MHA) were determined in this study. A total of 300 straight-run commercial broiler chicks were randomly distributed to five treatments following a completely randomized design, with each treatment replicated six times with ten birds per replicate. The treatments were: control (Tr 1), supplemented with MHA (Tr 2), DLM (Tr 3), MHA + betaine (Tr 4), and DLM + betaine (Tr 5). Results showed that live weight gain of broilers was not significantly affected by any of the methionine supplements. Partial replacement of the two methionine supplements with betaine likewise showed no significant effect on the weight of the birds. However, the values for birds fed with supplemented diets were generally higher than those of the control birds indicating that supplementation with betaine can, to some extent, improve the profitability of raising broilers as far as live weight is concerned. The same goes true for feed consumption, feed efficiency, mortality rate and dressing percentage wherein values for broilers supplemented with betaine were similar to those of the control birds, indicating that betaine can improve the overall performance of broilers.
ISSN 2619-7731 (Online)
ISSN 2094-8271 (Print)
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