Four dietary treatments were applied to sexed broiler chickens to evaluate ascites syndrome (AS), mortality, and corporal composition using productive parameters, corporal characteristics, and carcass yield to derive profit-cost relationships. One-day-old broiler chicks (2,200 males and 2,200 females), from a commercial strain, were assigned to eight groups of 550 birds each. These groups were distributed among four dietary treatments: 1) feeding ad libitum with a high-density diet, 2) feeding ad libitum with a low-density diet, 3) feeding ad libitum with a high-density diet from 1 to 14 d of age and from 15 to 52 d of age with the same diet for consumption 8 h/d, 4) high-density diet at 90% feed consumption as in Treatment 1 through 52 d of age. Treatments 3 and 4, with feed restriction, resulted in lower mortality rates than Treatments 1 and 2. The highest mortality was in males. The best weight gain was achieved in Treatments 1 and 2 (P < 0.05), whereas Treatments 3 and 4 resulted in the best feed conversion. For measured corporal characteristics, the main effect, sex, resulted in significantly different (P < 0.01) intestine, liver, abdominal fat, and carcass weights; length of tibia; yellowness of skin; and lengths of the duodenum to Meckel's diverticulum and Meckel's diverticulum to rectum (P < 0.05). The main effect, dietary treatment, was significantly different (P < 0.01) only for the yellowness of the skin. The interaction between the two main effects was significant (P < 0.05) for the intestine and carcass weights. Males exceeded females in carcass weight but not in the breast weigbt/carcass weight ratio. Treatments 1 and 2 resulted in the best carcass yield but Treatment 4 resulted in the best profit-cost relationship, the lowest mortality due to AS, the best feed conversion, good corporal composition with good pigmentation, and increased economic benefits in sale systems, live birds, and carcass sale.
