Co-Authors:
Bartov, I., Department of Poultry Science, The Volcani Center, Bet Dagan, Israel.
Abstract:
An experiment was carried out, in a factorial arrangement, with female broiler chicks during the period from 8 to 49 days of age. Combined effects were evaluated of dietary energy-to-protein ratio (E:P; 130 vs. 170 from 8 to 28 days of age and 140 vs. 190 from 28 to 49 days of age) and nicarbazin supplementation (0 vs. 125 mg/kg) on performance and fattening. At 49 days of age, feed intake was not affected either by dietary E:P or by nicarbazin supplementation. The latter significantly depressed weight gain (P less than .01) and feed efficiency (P less than .001), but did not affect abdominal fat pad weight. The wide E:P significantly decreased feed efficiency (P less than .01) and increased abdominal fat pad weight (P less than .001). Neither of the parameters was affected by the interaction between nicarbazin and dietary E:P. It was suggested that the growth-depressing effect of nicarbazin was due to its effect on increasing the metabolic rate, an increase which did not affect fattening as measured by abdominal fat pad weight.