Potentials of Bio Fermented Rice Husk Meal as a Replacement to Brewer’s Dried Grain in Finisher Broiler’s Diet

Abstract

Generation of rice husk waste is currently increasing in Nigeria leading to piles of heaps of the rice husk around the rice mills. Production cost for broilers has risen tremendously due to high cost of feed ingredients one of which is Brewer’s Dried Grain (BDG). Rice husk has been identified as a feed stuff but it contains high fibre and is abrasive which hindered its utilization as feed ingredient in broiler production. This research was then, conducted to determine the effect of replacing BDG with bio fermented rice husk in finisher broiler’s diet. Four treatment diets were formulated. T1 (control) contained 15% BDG while in T2, T3 and T4 bio fermented rice husk meal replaced BDG at 33.33%, 66.67% and 100% respectively. The diets were assigned to 120 broilers of 28 days old in a complete randomized design of 10 broilers each replicated 3 times. The performance of the broilers was observed for 28 days. The broilers were slaughtered to obtain the carcass and organ characteristics. The daily weight gain was similar (P > 0.05) among the groups while feed intake was highest for T4 group and no mortality was recorded. The percentage live weight of all the carcass and organ characteristics were similar (P > 0.05) among the treatment groups except the breast muscle which reduced for broilers on the test ingredient. The cost of producing the treatment diets was highest for control diet while cost of feeding broilers to a kilogram weight was least for the control group. The research concluded that though the fermented rice husk had a potential to substitute BDG in the diet of finisher broilers, there was an indication of high production cost.