Irfan Jan1, Abdul Kabir2, Laiba Uroog3, Shumaila Manzoor4*, Muhammad Said1, Nasir Rajput1

Abstract | The purpose of this study was to decrease the cost of feed without adversely affecting broilers performance. An experiment was conducted to study the effect of functional oils (soybean oil and castor oil) in diets with different metabolizable energy (ME) levels i.e. 2850, 2750 and 2650 kcal ME/kg on the overall performance of broiler chickens from 1 to 42 days. Two hundred and forty, day-old Cobb broiler chicks were randomly divided into four groups with three replicates per group. The results showed that mixing functional oils in feed improved live weight and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of the birds compared with diets with the same ME level. Moreover, functional oils when mixed in weak diets with ME (2750 kcal) showed similar results as control group where ME (2850 kcal) without functional oils. There was a significant difference (P > 0.05) in live body weight, feed intake, FCR, size of intestine while non-significant difference (P < 0.05) in water intake among the groups. Hence it was concluded that addition of functional oils in low energy diets could decrease the cost of feed without any negative effects on production and economics of broiler chickens as compared to high energy diet.

Keywords | Broiler, Functional oil, Metabolizable energy.