Feeding technique for broilers

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of alternating rations based on corn, millet and sorghum on the growth performance of broiler chickens. To this end, a total of 486 broiler chicks of the Cobb500 strain with an initial weight of 39±3g were used and randomly divided into 27 batches of 18 chicks, with 9 treatments and 3 replicates. The 9 treatments consisted, from the 21st day of rearing, of alternating cereal intake in the rations as follows: maize-maize (MM), maize-millet (MMl), maize-sorghum (MS), millet-maize (MlM), millet-millet (MlMl), millet-sorghum (MlS), sorghum-maize (SM), sorghum-millet (SMl) and sorghum-sorghum (SS). Apart from live weight (at 21 d and 42 d) and average daily gain, which were significantly higher in the millet-millet treatment than in the other treatments, feed consumption, feed conversion ratio, mortality rate and carcass yield were similar for all treatments. In total, alternating rations of maize, millet or sorghum from day 21 onwards did not significantly affect growth performance.