Free-range village chicken nutritional status and use of local agro-byproducts based feed supplement in small holders farms in Sabah

• Main Author: Nik Nur Rasyidah Nik Hassan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: SF481-507 Poultry. Eggs
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42726/1/24%20PAGES.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42726/2/FULLTEXT.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42726/

Keeping free-range village chicken (FRVC) with supplementations are common practices for most of the rural families in Sabah. However, the main limitation of the current practice is supplementing the FRVC overlooking their actual nutritional demand. The availability of the nutrients to the FRVC from scavenging sources is also unknown. In addition, until today, there is no standard ready-made supplementary feed in the market for FRVC in Sabah that can meet up the exact nutritional requirement of the FRVC, cost effectively. Therefore, a series of experiment were conducted in Sabah to; i) investigate the common feeding practices and nutrition related challenges in the FRVC, ii) know the nutritional status in the scavenging feed, iii) develop and test the capability of supplementary feed, and iv) establish protocol of introducing supplementary feed for FRVC. Initially, a survey on common feeding practices and nutritional related challenges were conducted on 153 respondents through interview. Results showed that 89.5% of the farmers practices supplementary feeding using commercial feed or broken maize which was available at local market. Next, a study on the nutritional availability and nutrition related challenges to the FRVC were performed on 120 FRVC from three different agro-ecological locations and age groups. The concentration of dry matter, crude protein, ash, crude fibre, ether extract, nitrogen free extract, metabolizable energy, phosphorus and calcium were 58.2%, 12.6%, 38.0%, 5.78%, 7.69%, 36.04%, 2180 kcal kg-1 DM, 0.009% and 0.200% in the crop gizzard contents (CGC) of the FRVC irrespective of the age and locations, respectively. There were significant variations in the age groups and locations of the FRVC (p<0.05). The nutrient requirements of these FRVC were computed and compared with the availability. Results showed that the major nutrients were insufficient in quantity to all FRVC and also imbalanced along with 100% parasitic burdens. To fulfil the deficiency of the nutrients particularly balancing the ME deficiency, two separate feed formulations for the young and adult FRVC have been introduced under this study. The ME contents in the young and adult feeds were 3150 Kcal and 3000 kcal kg-1 DM which would incur a cost of RM 1.45 and RM 1.41, respectively. The recommended supplementary amounts were 38.9, 54.3 and 30.44 g kg-1 body weight for young FRVC per day for the Sandakan, Kota Belud and Kundasang areas, whereas for adult FRVC per day, the amounts recommended were 33.4, 48.5 and 36.7 g kg-1 respectively in the same locations. The feed was formulated comprising of 5% local fish meal, 24.9% palm kernel cake (PKC), 10% copra meal, 20% local maize, 14.5% broken rice and 25% rice bran for the young feed and for the adult feed were 5%, 25.2%, 10%, 20%, 10.4%, and 25% respectively. Some common additives were also added. Supplementary feeding trial confirmed that the new feed have comparable body weight gain of the FRVC with that of the commercial broiler feed. Finally, it was concluded that this research introduced basic information on the nutritional status of the FRVC in Sabah for the first time. It also introduced two low-cost supplementary feed formulations for the young and adult FRVC in Sabah incorporating six local ingredients. This research also established a general procedure of introducing supplementary feed suitable for the FRVC applicable in other parts of Malaysia and others country.