Effect of Additives on Cassava Plant Meal Based Diet on the Performance Characteristics of Broiler Chicken

One hundred and fifty three day-old broilers were used to determine the effect of feed additives on cassava plant meal based diet on the performance of broiler chickens at the Poultry Unit, Teaching and Research farm Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. The birds were randomly distributed into seven (7) treatments. The first treatment was maize based diet which served as control, treatments 2 & 3 had 25% and 50% of maize in treatment 1 replaced with cassava plant meal while treatments 4, 5, 6 and 7 had the same composition with treatment 3 but with the inclusion of feed additives: Baker’s yeast, Hemicell, Oxytetracycline and palm oil, respectively. Management practices were strictly adhering to. Records on body weight, feed intake and feed to gain ratio were kept on treatment basis and subjected to one way analysis of variance using computer software package (SAS, 1998). The result showed that feed additives enhanced the utilization of cassava plant meal in broiler diet and baker’s yeast proved to be the best additive.