Chicken Nutrition Trial
Aim
To compare the effect of two different commercial broilers starter feeds on the growth of young meat chickens over a five day period.
Method
1. Divide 25 day old meat chickens into two groups. To divide them, use a randomisation method, where chickens are picked with no particular method. This is so results are not biased in any way as the two groups are roughly similar.
2. Feed the chickens on Broiler Starter Crumbles (22% C.P.) from feed merchant
Broiler Starter Crumbles for 4 days. This is done so that all the chickens have the same feed and conditions before the experiment begins.
3. Choose one group to receive feed merchant Barastoc’s Broiler Starter Crumbles (22% C.P.) and one group to receive feed merchant Vella Stock Feeds’ (23% C.P.). This is done through a randomisation process and chickens are randomly picked into groups.
4. On Day 0 weigh the chickens in each group and calculate the average weight. This needed to see how much the chickens have grown from seeing the original weight compared to later weights.
5. On Day 0 weight out five kilograms of each feed and place it in a labelled bin. Empty the feed troughs and refill them with feed from the bins making sure that the allocated feed goes to the right pens. This is so the pens will receive the same amount of feed at the same time and to ensure the chickens will only get the type of feed desired.
6. On days 0 to 4 weigh the chickens individually in each group and calculate the average weight. This is done to find out how much weight the chicks have gained daily so we can find out how effective the feed is. Top up the feed in the troughs from the appropriate bins.
7. On Day 4 after the chickens are weighed, weigh all the feed that is left in the bins and in the feed troughs. This is done so we can find out how much the chickens have eaten so we can derive a Feed Conversion Ratio.
Results
Raw Results:
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