PRODUCTIVE AND ECONOMICAL EVALUATION OF TWO STRAINS OF BROILERS FED TWO TYPES OF FEED

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca to evaluate the performance of two strains of broilers, Arbor Acres (AA) and Hubbard (HU), and the effect of two commercial feeds, one produced at national level identified as AN and the other produced locally and identified as AL. Furthermore, the optimum selling time was determined using production functions. Two hundred and ninety six chicks one day old, of both sexes, of each strain with an initial body weight of 39.1 ± 0.5 g for strain AA and 36.2 ± 0.4 g for strain HU, respectively, were used. The experimental design was a completely randomized with a factorial (2 x 2) arrangement of treatments; each treatment had four replicates of 37 birds each. Birds had ad libitum access to feed an water during the 56 days experimental period. The results indicated differences (p0.05) were found for ascites mortality in both strains fed the two types of feed. Abdominal fat differences (p0.05) were found in pigmentation, for both strains fed the two types of feed. The production functions indicated that the economic optimum was obtained at greater body weights than those of locally produced.