Effects of substitution of groundnut meal by defatted and boiled Jatropha curcas seed kernel in diet of broiler chicks in Senegal

This study was conducted to determine, in a growth diet, the effect of a substitution of groundnut meal by Jatropha curcas kernel meal physico-chemically treated on viability, feed intake and growth performances of broiler chicks. The feed experiment lasted for seven days with twenty Ross 308 strain unsexed chicks, seven-days old. Kernels, manually obtained from J. curcas seed, were defatted and boiled in order to obtain the treated jatropha kernel meal. This latter was used to replace the groundnut meal contained in a premix which was then incorporated in a commercial diet to warrant iso-nitrogenous and iso caloric characteristics of the diets. The results revealed that animals that received the diet incorporating jatropha kernel meal had numerically higher live weight (272.6 vs. 259.3 g/animal) (P>0.05) and average daily weight gain (15.9 vs. 13.5 g/day/animal) (P>0.05) than the control ones, at the end of experiment. The average daily feed intake was a bit similar for the two groups (34.1 vs 34.5 g/day/animal) (P>0.05) as well as the feed conversion ratio (2.2 vs. 2.7 respectively for the jatropha group and the control group). The survival rate, at the end of the experiment, was 100% for the two groups of animals