Taju Hussein, Mengistu Urge, Getachew Animut and Sisay Fikru
A study was conducted to evaluate the effects of feeding processed kidney bean meal (PKBM) by replacing soybean meal (SBM) on fertility, hatchability, embryonic mortality and chick quality of white leghorn (WL) hens. A total of 210 white leghorn hens (180 layers and 30 cocks) with uniform body weight (BW) (1121.17 g ± 24.92) and age (6.5 months) were randomly distributed into 15 pens and assigned to five treatments (i.e., T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5). A total of 195 eggs collected from all the treatment birds were used for the analysis. The feeds of the treatments were SBM substituted by PKBM at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% levels for T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5, respectively. Replacement of SBM with PKBM in the diet did not affect the fertility, hatchability and embryonic mortality. Chick length (15.63, 15.00, 15.33, 15.03 and 14.33(SEM ± 0.02)) and chick weight (34.13, 34.20, 33.13, 33.06 and 32.47(SEM ± 1.39)) for T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 respectively, were significantly (P<0.05) lower for T5 than the rest treatments. Visual assessment of chick quality is lower for treatments containing higher proportion of PKBM than treatments containing lower proportion of PKBM. Therefore, as it affects the quality of chicks at 100% replacement, it is only up to 75% replacement of SBM by PKBM (dosed at 195 g/kg concentrate diet) is possible without having significant negative effect on chick quality.
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