The effect of using beef spleen powder as a source of dietary protein on growth performance and safety of broilers

This experiment was conducted to study the effect of using beef spleen meal on growth performance and safety of broilers on 120 one-day-old male Ross 308 broiler chicks in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments, 4 replicates, and 6 chicks per replicate. The experimental included different levels of 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8% spleen meals. Feed intake, weight gain, and feed conversion ratio were recorded periodically. At the end of the experiment, two chickens each replicate were slaughtered to determine carcass components. To evaluate the immune response, a Solution of sheep red blood cells (SRBC) was injected intravenously. The amount of dry matter, crude protein, ether extract, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, iron, copper and zinc content of samples were; 95, 77.3, 12.5, 0.038, 1.09, 0.51, 0.36, 0.23, 0.0012 and 0.0078%. The result showed that most performance parameters were significantly affected by the different levels of spleen meal so using spleen meal caused more weight gain than the control group. Diets containing spleen meal had significantly lower feed consumption and feed conversion ratio than the control group (p≤0.001). The use of different levels of spleen meal had no significant effect on the safety parameters measured in this experiment. According to the obtained results, the use of spleen powder in the broiler diet is recommended up to 8% nutritionally and economically.