Determining the optimal level of wheat middlings in the diet of Arian broilers by multi-attribute decision making method

An experiment was conducted to determine the optimal dietary level of wheat middlings for Arian commercial strain broilers. One thousand and fifty hundred Arian broiler chickens (a mixture of two sexes) were reared from 5 to 49 days old in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments, 10 replicates and 30 birds in each replicate. Experimental treatments included zero (control), 12.5, 25, 37.5 and 50% levels of wheat middlings in the diet. Wheat middlings reduced the feed cost per kilogram of live weight of broilers at 49 days of age; these reductions at levels of 37.5 and 50% were about 9 and 11%, respectively, and were significant compared to the control. The multi-attribute decision making (MADM) method was applied to determine the optimal level of wheat middlings in the diet. Based on the scoring obtained from this method, the group of birds receiving 37.5% of wheat middlings gained the highest score (72.92) and the groups receiving 25, 50, 12.5 and 0% wheat middlings were in the next ranks (72.58, 72.52, 63.98 and 17.41), respectively. In the end, the optimal level of dietary wheat middlings inclusion to achieve the highest management score obtained by the MADM method was determined to be 34.7%.