Influence of processing temperature on chemical composition of solar-dried blood meal and on performance of broiler chickens

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to ascertain the optimum temperature for cooking (pre-heating) raw blood before solar drying. Raw blood was subjected to three cooking temperatures (50°, 70° and 90°C) for 30 rain before solar drying at a temperature range from 45° to 56°C. In a feeding trial, four hundred and eighty 14-day-old broiler chickens were randomly allocated to four groups. The dietary treatments consisted of the control diet, which contained fish meal and soyabean meal as the main protein sources, and three isoenergetic and isoprotein diets each of which contained 75 g of one of the three types of solar dried blood meals (SDBM) kg-1. Feed and water were provided ad libitum for a period of 6 weeks. There was no significant effect of the cooking temperature on the chemical composition of the solar-dried blood meals. The dietary treatments did not have significant (P>0.05) impact on feed intake, body weight gain, feed conversion efficiency or carcass yields. There were no health-related problems nor mortality attributable to the addition of SDBM to the diet.