Performance of broiler chickens fed with sunflower cake

Two experiments were carried out to evaluate sunflower cake (SC) diet effect on performance of broiler chickens. Night-six animals aging, 28 days were utilized in Experiment 1. The animals were fed on a reference ration and on a test ration containing 20% of SC. Values for digestibility coefficients of DM, CP, EE, CF and AMEn were, based on natural matter, 46.18; 60.70; 81.53; 6.42% and 2,800 kcal/kg, respectively. In experiment 2, performance, where 420 chickens were used, assigned to seven treatments, being a control diet (0% SC) and the combination of three levels of dietary inclusion of SC (6, 12 and 18%) and two ages starting at first feeding, 20 (A1) or 34 (A2) days, there was a quadratic effect on feed intake and weight gain (maximum points: 9.6 and 12.3% respectively) and linear decrease in feed conversion for A1. For the feeding at A2 the performance parameters were not affected by the levels of SC. Considering that feed conversion to SC can compose 18% of the diets of broilers from 20 or 34 days.