Effects of Different Levels of Substitution of Extruded Soybean with Soybean Meal and Vitamin E Supplementation on Performance and Carcass Characteristics of Broiler Chicks

An experiment was conducted with 264 Cobb 500 day-old chicks in order to study the effect of different substitution levels of soybean meal (SBM) with extruded soybean (ESB) and vitamin E supplement on performance and carcass characteristics of broiler chicks. This study was conducted in a 4×2 factorial arrangement with 8 treatment and 3 replicates of 11 broiler chicks per each replicate in a completely randomized design. The experimental treatments were four substitution levels of SBM (0, 25, 50 and 75 percent) with ESB and two levels of vitamin E supplementation (42 and 75 IU/kg of diet). Results showed the effects of different substitution levels of SBM with ESB on production traits like feed intake, weight gain and feed conversion ratio as well as some carcass characteristics (breast muscle, thighs and liver as a percentage of live weight) was not significant. A significant interaction effect was found between levels of SBM substitution with ESB and vitamin E on weight gain at 42 days of age (P<0.05). Effects of substitution of SBM with ESB on percentage of pancreas weight was significant (P<0.05) as with increasing substitution levels the pancreas weight also increased. Effects of vitamin E on all the traits was significant (P<0.05) but carcass traits was not significantly affected by vitamin E levels (P>0.05).