Partial replacement of soybean meal with infertile egg powder: effects on growth performance and organ traits of Indonesia native chickens

Novi Akhirini, Wara Pratitis Sabar Suprayogi, Rendi Fathoni Hadi, Wahyu Setyono and Agung Irawan

Vocational Program of Animal Husbandry, Vocational School, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Jl. Ir. Sutami 36 A Surakarta, 57126 Indonesia
warapratitis@staff.uns.ac.id

Abstract

The present study evaluated dietary inclusion levels of infertile eggs powder (IEP) from hatchery processing industry on kampong chickens’ performance, organ characteristics, and income over feed cost (IOFC). A total of 120 birds at 21 d (327±18 gram) were equally distributed to receive 4%, 8% and 12% of IEP where each treatment was replicated five times with eight birds in each, giving four dietary treatments including control. Diets were formulated to meet Indonesia National Standard of nutrient requirement for kampong chickens. Results showed that dietary IEP to partially replace SBM did not affect chickens’ performance at 5 weeks but significantly increased body weight (BW) at 10 weeks without affecting feed intake (FI). No difference was observed between dietary levels. In addition, feeding IEP to Kampong chickens positively increased carcass weight and carcass percentage (p<0.05) with birds received 4% IEP had significantly highest carcass percentage. IEP inclusion increased gizzard weight at 4% and 8% but not affected liver, spleen, and gastrointestinal tract of Kampong chickens (p>0.05). All performance variables including BW, ADG, FI, and FCR were following curvilinear patterns (p<0.05; BW = -47.45x² + 260.42x + 810.88 R² = 0.82; and FI = -57.908x² + 305.55x + 2205.8 R² = 0.44; y = -0.0437x² + 0.62x + 15.78 (R² = 0.81) for ADG; and y = 0.0031x² - 0.0465x + 2.404 (R² = 0.98) for FCR, in response to increasing IEP inclusion. In conclusion, the present study suggests that infertile eggs powder can be partially used to substitute conventional protein source in kampong chickens. In addition, IEP also lowers feed cost at finisher period thus increases income over feed cost significantly.

Keywords: alternative feed, hatchery by-products, native chickens, protein source

Introduction

Poultry industry is growing rapidly to meet the high demand of accessible protein source and is forecasted to continuously increase along with the population growth worldwide (USDA 2020). Consequently, the need for feed source is also increased. In the poultry farm operations, feed constitutes the largest portion of production cost. Therefore, efforts are made to reduce feed cost by utilizing non-conventional feedstuff that are plenty and economically feasible, especially to replace certain percentage of soybean meal (SBM) as the main source of protein in feed formulation. Indonesia is the second largest importer of SBM where the feed mill industries are fully dependent on the imported SBM (Observatory of Economic Complexity 2020). For this reason, searching the most sustainable source of protein to compensate SBM utilization is primarily important to address high volatility of feed cost.

Hatchery processing produces a large quantity of infertile eggs as its main by-products. Giving an estimated annual population of parent stock in Indonesia to be more than 300 billion birds (Statistics of Indonesia 2020), poultry breeding farms can produce more than 10 million tons of infertile eggs a year. This amount can be a good alternative to substitute SBM use in feed formulation. In particular, the bioavailability of protein derived from animal products is higher than those of plant protein ingredients (Choi et al 2021). This would be more advantageous for newly hatched chicks considering their immature gastrointestinal tracts with low production of endogenous enzymes (Noy and Sklan 2002).

Previous studies have reported that infertile eggs contained higher metabolizable energy (ME) than that of SBM with considerable percentage of protein and amino acids (Abiola and Onun Kwor 2004; Ratriyanto et al 2021). In addition, a number of experiments have demonstrated that feeding up to 8% infertile eggs improved broiler chickens’ performance as well as improved the digestive tracts development (Ratriyanto et al 2020, 2021). Similarly, infertile eggs inclusions were also suggested to enhance immunity of broiler chickens (Esmailzadeh et al 2016). Although another research suggested that replacing fish meal using infertile eggs had no effects on broiler performance and organ weight (Choi et al 2021), however, benefit from the reduction of feed cost might be expected. While there have been sufficient evidences on broiler chickens, to our knowledge, little information is known on the application of infertile eggs on Indonesian native chickens. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of infertile eggs inclusion on the performance of Indonesian native chickens as well as its implication on feed cost.

Materials and methods

Animals, experimental design, and diets formulation

The experiment was conducted in experimental farm of the Department of Animal Science, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia. All facilities were provided to meet the standard of animal welfare including space, ventilation, lighting, drinking water, and security. In total, 120 day-old chicks (DOC) male of Indonesian native chickens were allocated to receive one of the four dietary treatments where each treatment consisted of four replicates (8 birds in each). The DOCs were purchased from local hatchery in Surakarta, Indonesia and the sexes were determined on arrival. The treatments were according to the inclusion levels of infertile eggs (IE) in formula (IEP 0 = without IEP; IEP 4 = inclusion of 4% of IEP; IEP 8 = inclusion of 8% of IEP, and IEP 12 = inclusion of 12% of IEP in the formulated diet).

Infertile eggs were obtained from commercial hatchery located in Boyolali, Central Java, Indonesia. The infertile egg was prepared in powder form where the preparation was according to the previous methods by (Ratriyanto et al., 2021) without including the egg shell. Briefly, the infertile eggs were boiled for 30 minutes at 100°C and then soaked for approximately 20 minutes in a cold water to remove the shells. Following this step, the egg contents were oven dried at 55°C to anticipate nutrient loss and then finely ground. The IE powder was tested for E. coli and Salmonella contamination to ensure the safe use for formulation. Chemical composition of IE powder is provided in Table 1 where the dietary compositions of each treatment groups is presented in Table 2.

The dietary treatments were formulated to meet the nutrient requirements of the National Indonesia Standard (SNI 2013) both for starter and finisher. The birds were raised in brooders for 10 days following the arrival. The birds received a Newcastle Disease vaccine at day 4 and Infectious Bursal Disease (Gumboro) at day 13. Feed and drinking water were provided ad libitum for the period of 60 days. Lighting was scheduled following the recommendation of Ross Broiler Handbook where the room temperature was set at 30°C and gradually decreased to 24°C (Aviagen 2018).

Sample collection and chemical analysis

Body weight was observed on weekly basis by weighting all birds in each pen (replicate). Feed intake and mortality were recorded daily where feed conversion ratio (FCR) was calculated weekly by dividing the feed intake with BWG corrected for mortality. At the end, two birds per pen were euthanized to measure the organ weight (carcass, digestive organs, and lymphoid organs).

Chemical composition of the feedstuff used in formulation was analyzed for dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), Crude Protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), ether extract (EE), ash, calcium, and phosphorus using AOAC (2005) procedures. The DM content was determined by oven dried at 105℃ until achieve a constant weight (#973.18; AOAC 2005) while ash and OM contents were calculated after combustion at 550 ℃ (#942.05; AOAC 2005). The CP content was calculated using Kjeldahl methods by multiplying the N content with 6.25 (#984.13; AOAC 2005), and the EE content using ether extraction (#920.39; AOAC 2005).

Statistical analysis

Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA by employing the PROC MIXED procedure of SAS (SAS Studio 3.8, University Edition, 2018) considering the treatment units as fixed effect and replication as a random effect. Significant statement was declared when p < 0.05. At this case, post hoc test was performed using Tukey’s HSD to compare the least-square means among treatments.

Results and Discussion

Proximate analysis showed that IEP used in the present study (Table 1) was comparable with previous studies reporting chemical composition of infertile eggs from hatchery processing industry (Choi et al 2021; Ratriyanto et al 2020). Data on Kampong Chickens performance are presented in Table 3. Increasing dietary IEP to partially replace SBM did not affect body weight (BW), average daily gain (ADG), feed intake (FI), and feed conversion ratio (FCR) measured at 5 weeks (p>0.05). However, significant increases were found on these performance variables at the end of rearing period (10 weeks) corresponding to increasing IEP levels in the diet. No mortality was recorded during the study. BW and FI were following curvilinear patterns (p<0.05; BW = -47.45x2 + 260.42x + 810.88 R² = 0.82 and FI = -57.908x2 + 305.55x + 2205.8 R² = 0.44) in response to increasing IEP inclusion (Figure 1). In addition, curvilinear patters were also observed on ADG and FCR as shown in Figure 2 whereas the models for these variables were better than those of BW and FI according to their coefficient of determination (R²). The model for ADG was y = -0.0437x² + 0.62x + 15.78 (R² = 0.81) and FCR was y = 0.0031x2 - 0.0465x + 2.404 (R² = 0.98). The results show a slight improvement in growth rate and feed conversion with 4% infertile egg powder in the diet followed by a slight reduction in performance however the economic advantages of replacing soybean with the egg powder justify this light deterioration in performance with higher levels in the diet.

Figure 1. Relationship between average daily gain and feed conversion ratio with infertile egg levels in the ration

Results of the present study was similar to most of study conducted previously where IEP can be used to improve chickens’ performance (Esmailzadeh et al 2016). Since all previous studies were conducted on broiler chickens, it is suggested that kampong chicken has similar physiological responses to dietary IEP. To our knowledge, this is first study reporting the influence of IEP on kampong chickens. Improvement effect found in this study might be attributed to at least two main factors: (1) increasing nutrient density both on protein and metabolizable energy (ME) when IEP inclusion increased, and (2) characteristics of infertile egg which contains antibody materials and bioactive constituents (Frempong et al 2019; Hamungalu et al 2020; Ratriyanto et al 2021). In addition, protein profile of infertile egg was also reported to be highly digestible that is a common character of egg. It is supported by previous study found a higher digestibility value of hatchery by-products than conventional protein sources. Beski et al (2015) found a higher palatability and digestibility of hatchery byproducts than that of fish meal and SBM. In addition, egg preserves as an excellence source of nutrient for embryo developments and post hatch chicks. Thus, it is easily used by the birds for metabolism and growth, promoting better performance.

Supporting evidences are available whereas IEP inclusion promote to improve digestive tracts development and enhance immune status in broiler chickens (Abiola and Onun Kwor 2004; Esmailzadeh et al 2016). In another experiment, it was also reported that infertile egg was able to modulate intestinal microorganism due to the bioactive components and lysozyme contained in egg (Nasution et al 2018). Esmailzadeh et al (2016) found a decreased in E. coli and an increased in lactic acid bacteria population in birds fed diets containing infertile eggs. They also found that intestinal morphology was improved as indicated from the higher villus height, villus to crypt ratio, and intestinal length relative to BW. All of these evidences supported our findings that infertile eggs have some functional properties other than good nutrient sources. As shown in Table 3, IEP inclusion had no adverse effects on feed intake and organs’ weight, suggesting that IEP is safe and can be used in poultry diet.

In regard to the effect of IEP on organ weight, this study found that there was no significant effect on small intestine and its constituents (duodenum, jejenum, ileum) and gizzard weights (p>0.05). However, proventriculus and carcass percentages were found to be higher in groups with IEP inclusion (p<0.05). This result can be explained that IEP is an excellence protein source. Higher protein digestibility can often lead to higher carcass percentage because proteins are major body components (Ratriyanto et al 2020). In proventriculus, IEP is easier to degrade and less rate of passage in the organ led to decrease the weight. However, since studies examining such effect is limited, further study with specific purpose on organ development is important to carry out.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the present study suggests that infertile eggs powder can be partially use to substitute conventional protein source in kampong chickens. Dietary inclusion of IEP up to 8% in the formula improves kampong chickens’ performance without any adversely effects on feed intake and other performance variables. In addition, IEP also lowers feed cost at finisher period thus increases income over feed cost significantly.

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Institute of Research and Community Service of Universitas Sebelas Maret (LPPM UNS) for the financial support through research group research scheme (HGR-UNS; contract no. 260/UN27.22/HK.07.00/202) of 2021 fiscal year.

Conflict of interests

No conflict of interests to declare

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