Effects of chick quality and use of medium chain fatty acids in diet on growth performance and carcass parameters in broiler chicks

The present study was conducted to determine effects of medium chain fatty acids feeding broiler chicks classified low and high quality after hatching during 35 days fatteining period. Experimental chicks after hatching, were divided according to their gender and then divided into two quality groups as high and low . Each quality group was then divided into 2 feeding groups receiving control (soya oil) or middle chain fatty acids. Thus four treatment groups were obtained. In the experiment, total 800 chicken were used, which consisted of 5 replicates of each treatment group and consisted of 40 chicks (20 male, 20 female) of each. Feed and water were given to the chicks as ad libitum. The chicks were subjected to weekly weighing to calculate live weight gain, feed consumption, feed conversion rate and mortality. The results of the study showed that initial live weight was affected by chick quality (P<0.05). End of the experiment all groups exhibited similar growth performance as no significant differences for weight gain and feed conversation rate (P>0.05) were obtained, however, feed consumption was higher in high quality chicks (P<0.05). At the end of the experiment, it was found that there was a higher mortality rate among the low quality chicks (P <0.05). Slaughter weight of chicks were effected by gender, chick quality and dietary oil sources, while carcass yield was affected only by gender (P <0.05).