Effect of cricket meal substituted soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) on feed intake and weight gain

Nguyen Thiet, Nguyen Trong Ngu¹ and Le Thanh Phuong²

College of Rural Development, Can Tho University, Can Tho City, Vietnam
nthiet@ctu.edu.vn
¹ College of Agriculture, Can Tho University, Can Tho City, Vietnam
² Vietswan Poultry Production Joint Stock Company, Binh Duong Province, Vietnam

Abstract

This experiment aimed to evaluate the effect of cricket meal substituted soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) on feed intake and weight gain. The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized design with 3 treatments and 4 replicates (4 white-eared Junglefowl per replication). The treatments consisted of control: diet without cricket meal (control); treatment 1: a diet containing 3% cricket meal (3CM) to substitute 12.05% of soybean meal; treatment 2: a diet containing 6% cricket meal (6CM) to substitute 26.93% of soybean meal. The results from the experiment showed that birds consumed up to 6% cricket meal in the diets without the negative impacts on dry matter intake (DMI), body weight, weight gain, and feed conversion rate (FCR) as compared to the control (p>0.05). However, birds supplemented with 3% cricket meal improved weight gain and decreased FCR compared to control (p <0.05). Additionally, Junglefowl fed with 3% cricket meal were the best choices for economic return. It can be concluded that cricket meal was considered as a protein resource that can partly replace soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl.

Key words: broiler, cricket meal, Junglefowl, production

Introduction

Recently, researchers reported that insects have been recommended as alternative protein sources in animal feed with high crude protein (CP) levels and good quality amino acid profiles (Wang et al 2005; Sanchez-Muros et al 2014). Previous studies suggested that insect meal such as black soldier fly larvae, house fly maggots, mealworm, grasshoppers, crickets, and silkworm meals can be partly replaced fish meal (FM) or soybean meal (SBM). Insect meal has comparable CP and fat contents to FM and SBM (Makkar et al 2014) and does not adverse effects on poultry production (Wang et al 2005; Permatahati et al 2019; Moula and Detilleux, 2019). In Vietnam, white-eared Junglefowl have been popular recently, particularly in remote areas, due to good quality meat and low feed cost compared to commercial broilers. In addition, the farmers traditionally fed their Junglefowl with cereal grains, grasshopper, earthworms, and particularly cricket. Because cricket are easy to produce, have a rapid growth rate, a short reproductive cycle, and a high feed conversion rate. However, little information is available regarding the usage of cricket meal in the diets of Junglefowl.

Thus, the present experiment aimed to determine the effect of cricket meal substituted soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl on feed intake and weight gain. A shift from conventional protein sources such as FM and SBM towards cricket meal might result in more efficient use of natural resources and lower emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition, the results from this study would contribute to sustainable livestock development and environmental protection.

Materials and methods

Preparation of cricket meal

Crickets obtained from cricket farm at College of Rural Development, Can Tho University in Phung Hiep district of Hau Giang province, Vietnam. After collecting from the farm, the crickets were stored in a freezer for a day. Then they were thawed, clean with fresh water, and dried in an oven at 60^oC for two days. The dried crickets were ground using a blender to obtain the cricket meal and then included in the experimental diets.

Birds and housing

The experiment was conducted at the Experimental farm of the College of Rural Development, Can Tho University in Phung Hiep district of Hau Giang province. The chickens were cared for and handled following the Animal Husbandry Law of Vietnam (32/2018/QH14). All birds were vaccinated before starting the experiment and housed in confinement houses with a density of 02 birds/m².

Experimental design and data collection

The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized design with 3 treatments, 4 replicates (4 white-eared junglefowl per replication). The experiment used 48 white-eared junglefowl of mixed sex for 6 weeks (from 5^th to 11^th week of age, photo 1), consisting of one week for the adaptation period and five weeks for data collection. The treatments consisted of the control group: diet without cricket meal (control); treatment 1: a diet containing 3% cricket meal (3CM) to substitute 12.05% of soybean meal and treatment 2: a diet containing 6% cricket meal (6CM) to substitute 26.93% of soybean meal. The chemical compositions of cricket meal are shown in Table 1 and the ingredients and chemical compositions of experimental rations are presented in Table 2. The birds were fed twice daily at 08:00 and 14:00 h and had free access to water. At the beginning and end of the trial, all birds from each replication were weighed before feeding in the morning.

Feed offered and refusals were recorded daily in the morning starting from day 1^st to 35^th of the experiment. Feed and refusal samples were collected once a week and were divided into two parts: one half was immediately dried in the oven at 105°C until its weight remained constant to determine the dry matter, and the remaining samples were kept frozen at -20°C until chemical analysis. All feed samples were thawed and mixed thoroughly at the end of the experiment, and subsamples were dried at 65°C for approximately 12 hours for CP and CF analysis according to AOAC (1990).

Photo 1. White-eared junglefowl at 11 weeks of age

Statistical analysis

The data are presented as the mean ± SEM. All data were analyzed with one-way ANOVA. The significance of pairwise comparisons was determined by Tukey posttest. Significance was declared at p<0.05.

Results and discussion

The DMI in this experiment did not differ among treatments (Table 3, p>0.05). Feed intake is one of the indicators to evaluate the palatability of feed ingredients. This study indicated that cricket meal was proper to be consumed by Junglefowl because the DMI from cricket meal groups was similar to the control group. These findings were consistent with prior research in which insects had no measurable impact on feed intake (Onsongo et al 2018; Moula and Detilleux, 2019). Wang et al. (2005) found that Arbor Acres broiler consumed field cricket meals up to 15% without affecting DMI. In addition, Permatahati et al. (2019) reported that DMI from female Japanese quail was not affected by female field cricket supplementation by up to 8%. But, Nginya et al. (2019) found that feed intake from indigenous chickens decreased with the diet containing high levels (above 5%) of grasshopper meal. Lower DMI may be caused by a high fat content or chitin level in insect meal, followed by a decrease in nutrient digestibility (Nginya et al 2019; Moula and Detilleux, 2019). The different responses to insect supplementation on DMI between the present experiment and previous studies may differ in the levels of insect meal in diet, type of insects and poultry species.

The result the current study showed that the inclusion of 3% cricket meal in the diet of Junglefowl has improved weight gain, and lower in FCR compared to control (Table 3, p<0.05). Higher weight gain and lower FCR may be due to the improvement of CP digestibility at a low level of insect meal in the diet of poultry, as reported by Nginya et al. (2019). However, Junglefowl fed with 6% cricket meal was similar weight gain and FCR compared to control (Table 3, p>0.05). In addition, the results showed that weight gain was a negative relationship (Figure 1; R² = 1), and FCR was a positive relationship (Figure 2; R² = 1) when RM supplementation increased. Moula and Detilleux (2019) suggested that increasing rates of insect inclusion are associated with a decrease in weight gain of birds, particularly for rates of 10% and more, and the same tendency in the present work (Figure 1; R² = 1). This is due to the imbalance of nutrient composition or high level of chitin is less digestible. Another factor is the influence of insect meal on the villi's morphology. According to certain research, high levels of black soldier fly larvae or mealworm decreased the height of intestinal villi (Biasato et al 2018a; Moniello et al 2019) or the total luminal villus absorptive area (Biasato et al 2018b). Some research found that feeding field cricket meal to birds did not influence on weight gain or FCR in Arbor Acres broilers (Wang et al 2005) or female Japanese quail (Permatahati et al 2019).

The current study showed that the cost of 1 kg weight gain of Junglefowl from 3CM and 6CM groups was cheaper than that compared to control group from 24.2% (6CM) to 31.34% (3CM) (Table 3). The findings of this study's cost of production are consistent with those of Adeniji (2007) and Bombata & Balogun (1997). Similarly, Hatab et al (2018) discovered that replacing meat and bone meal with 5% or 10% insect meal in Japanese quail diets increased the economic benefit from 9% to 39% compared to the control group.

Figure 1. Curvilinear trend in weight gain (g/head/day) as cricket meal substituted soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl	Figure 2. Curvilinear trend in feed conversion rate as cricket meal substituted soybean meal in the diet of white-eared Junglefowl

Conclusions

• Cricket meal can replace up to 26.93% of SBM or 6% cricket meal in diets without affecting DMI, body weight, weight gain and FCR of Junglefowl. However, Junglefowl fed a diet with 3% cricket meal was the best choice in terms of economic return.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the manager of the Experimental farm at College of Rural Development, Can Tho university for supplying all the experiment materials and sincere gratitude thanks to Mr. Khang and Ms. Tram for taking care of the experiment.

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