Abstract
An experiment was conducted using 112 Khaki CarnpLell ducklings of about 11 weeks age to see the effect of replacing calorie and protein in their diets with poultry droppings. There was no significant difference in body weight gain, feed consurnpion and feed efficiency due to the replacement of calorie and protein in the ration of ducklings with 5,10 and 15 per cent poultry droppings. However, the feed cost per bird gradually decreased with the inclur sion of higher levels of poultry droppings.
INTRODUCTION
Feed is the main constraint in the development of duck industry, though there are vast opportunities for this industry in a rivarian country like Bangla-desh. Efforts are therefore needed to explore the possibilities of using unconven-tional sources of feed in the ration to reduce feed cost. Poultry droppings may be one of the such uncoventional feed items which is easily available and can be used in duck ration.
Poultry built.up litter is a source of valuable nutrients like riboflavin and vitamin B12. Poultry droppings contain about 25% crude protein, half of which is true protein (Iiiely et al., 1980). The metabolizable energy value of poultry droppings was found to be 850 Kcal/kg (Blair, 1974). Kotlyar et al. (1983) and Koniok and Rozyeka (1984) carried out researches with poultry droppings on different kinds of chicken for both meat and eggs. But feeding of poultry droppings in ducklings is completely a new approach in Bangladesh. The present work was planned to study the effect of various levels of poultry droppings on body weight gain, feed consumption, feed efficiency, mortality of ducklings and also to find out its economic feasibility in duck ration.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS
The experiment was conducted for a period of nine weeks at Bangladesh
