Effect of dietary lipid sources on production performance of broilers

A study was conducted to determine the influence of different dietary lipid sources and inclusion levels on production performance of male broilers. Eight isoenergetic (15.1 MJ AME/kg DM) and isonitrogenous (223 g CP/kg DM) diets were formulated, using high oleic sunflower oil (HO), sunflower oil (SO), fish oil (FO) and tallow (T) at a 30 g/kg and 60 g/kg dietary inclusion level. Eight hundred (800), day-old Ross 788 broiler males were randomly allocated to the eight treatments (n = 100) and were further subdivided into four replicates/treatment (n = 25). All birds receive a standard commercial diet for the first 14 days, where-after the experimental diets were fed for 28 days. Feed intake and body weights were recorded weekly, while mortalities were recorded and dead birds weighed daily. Mortalities were brought into consideration during the calculation of average daily feed intake (g feed/bird/day) and feed conversion ratio (g feed/g body weight gain). Contrary to saturated fatty acids (T), the inclusion of unsaturated fatty acids (HO, SO, FO) at a higher level (60 g/kg) resulted in a significantly improved FCR. It seems that the optimum dietary inclusion level of saturated fatty acids is lower (30 g/kg) than that of unsaturated sources.