Abstract

ALMEIDA, M.; MARTINEZ-PEREZ, M.  and  DIHIGO-CUTTIS, L.E.. Effect of Moringa oleifera forage meal intake on digestive indicators of colostomized broilers. Cuban J. Agric. Sci. [online]. 2016, vol.50, n.4, pp.569-578. ISSN 0864-0408.

In order to determine the effect of Moringa oleifera (moringa) forage meal intake cv. supergenius on digestive indicators in colostomized broilers, a total of 24 male broilers (hybrid EB34) of 47 d of age and 1.95 kg of  live weight as average were used, and allocated in individual cages for metabolism. A completely randomized design with three treatments and eight repetitions was used. The treatments consisted of control diet (soybean-maize) and inclusion of 10 % and 20 % of moringa forage meal. It was demonstrated that the birds with 10 and 20% of moringa forage meal increased the dry matter (P <0.001) and nitrogen (P <0.05) intake with respect to the control diet. When determining the apparent digestibility of nutrients, there was decrease of dry matter, N and cell wall components (NDF, ADF and cellulose) with the intake of 20% of the fibrous source. The 10% inclusion did not differ from the control diet. When evaluating the gastrointestinal tract morphometric, the intake of moringa forage meal increased gizzard weight regarding the control diet (P <0.0001) and the caeca reached the maximum lengths with a 20% inclusion. It was shown that the intake of 10 % of moringa forage meal did not affect the nutrients digestibility and caused higher digestive activity, when causing morphological modifications. This indicates beneficial results for the digestive physiology of broilers

Keywords : birds; colostomy; nutrients digestibility; fibrous source; morphometric indicators.

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