The growth performance, carcass characteristics and blood profile of broilers fed on yellow maize stored in polypropylene and zerofly® hermetic bags

This experiment was conducted to determine the growth performance, blood profile and carcass characteristics of broilers fed yellow maize stored in Polypropylene (PP) and ZeroFly® Hermetic (ZFH) storage bags for six months. Two hundred unsexed day-old Cobb-500 broiler chicks were randomly allocated to 2 treatments (2 storage bags) with 100 chicks per treatment in a Completely Randomized Design experiment. Each treatment had four replications with 25 birds per replicate. The experimental diets were formulated using the same quantities of maize stored in the PP and ZFH bags. The study was in three phases, that is, starter, grower and finisher phases and each had 22%, 20% and 18% crude protein (CP), respectively. The experiment lasted for six weeks. Feed and water were offered ad libitum. Statistical analyses were performed with SAS Version 9.4. Effects of storage bags were assessed using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference test was used as an option in the Mixed Procedure to determine differences between means (p < 0.05). Broilers on the ZFH bag dietary treatment recorded significantly (p = 0.035) higher weight gain in grams (2395.11 ± 32.15), than their counterparts on the PP treatment (1980.30 ± 82.19). The feed conversion ratio, measured as feed: gain ratio, was better (p = 0.041) for the ZFH birds (1.74 ± 0.03) than the PP birds (2.24 ± 0.19). Birds fed the ZFH diet had higher (p < 0.05) dressing percentage (74.05 ± 0.24), percentage whole thigh (14.45 ± 0.10) and percentage drumstick (9.22 ± 0.16) than their PP counterparts. All the blood profile parameters measured were similar except total cholesterol and aspartate aminotransferase in which birds on the ZFH maize recorded higher values (p < 0.05). It was concluded that maize stored in ZeroFly® hermetic storage bags could be fed to broilers for better feed efficiency and carcass yield. Key words: Deltamethrin, grain storage technique, mycotoxin contamination, post-harvest loss