Preliminary Study on Tomato Pomace as Unusual Feedstuff in Broiler Diets

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the tomato pomace (TP) as unusual feed stuff in broiler diets in terms of growth, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and mortality. 300-day old Hubbard broiler chicks were weighed and randomly distributed into 4 groups with three replicates of 25 chicks each. Birds were fed four experimental diets in which the first was the control group (T1) and the other diets contained 10% alkali treated tomato pomace (T2), 10% heat-treated tomato pomace (T3) and 10% sun dried tomato pomace (T4). All diets were isonitrogenous and isocaloric. Feed and water were offered ad-lib during the experiment period. The results of this experiment showed that there were no significant differences (P<0.05) in live body weight due to feeding chicks diets containing TP. The only significant difference (P<0.05) was observed between the control group and those fed dietary treatments. Body weight gain had nearly the same trend as live body weight. Cumulative feed consumption was significantly (P<0.05) affected by feeding TP when compared with control group. There were no significant differences (P<0.05) in FCR of chicks fed different dietary treatments when compared with those fed control diets. Mortality rate was 3% during the whole experiment period, which is insignificant.