Determination of metabolizable energy and dry matter digestibility of indigenous feed stuffs used in poultry rations

The project was conducted to determine the AME, TME and dry matter digestibility. Five feedstuffs were used for this purpose. Thirty 16-week-old cockerels were used in such a way that five birds was force fed 30g of each feedstuff. Five birds were kept fasted to serve as negative control for determination of metabolic feacal and urinary endogenous excretions. The prefeeding fasting period was 21 hr and excreta were collected over a period of 24 hr. proximate analysis for moisture, crude protein, ash, crude fibre acid nitrogen free extract was carried out. The gross energy of the ingredients and the excreta was measured by using adiabatic bomb calorimeter and AME and TME were worked out. The observed AME values for maize, rice tips, wheat, sorghum and millet were 3612.74, 3661.62, 3296.85, 3514.92 and 3278.46 Kcal/kg respectively. Rice tips have the highest value acrd on the other hand millet has the lowest value. The observed TME values for maize, rice tips, wheat, sorghum and millet were 4059.6, 4095.36, 3738.58, 3965.71 and 3730.62 Kcal/kg respectively. Rice tips have the highest value followed by maize, sorghum, wheat and millet has the lowest value. Endogenous energy ranged from 11.5314 to 12.7099 Kcal with the average of 12.02 Kcal. Dry matter digestibility was highest for rice tips (77.41%) followed by maize (75.64%), sorghum (72.13%), millet (71.88%) and lowest value for wheat (67.26%) due to relatively high content of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin etc. Rice tips have better digestibility so it should be included at higher percentage in poultry feed. It was also found that crude fiber has indirect relationship with both AME and TME. While ether extract has direct relationship with gross energy. While for the comparison with the NRC values it was found that for both AME and TME except wheat, other ingredients have lesser values than reported in NRC and statistically it was found that there was non-significant relationship between the observed and standard mean values.