Low Protein Diets for Broilers

Protein is generally considered one of the major cost components of poultry diets. In recent years, the use of low CP diets with amino acids supplementation in broilers has increased due to the reasons of feed cost, feed efficiency and flexibility in feed formulation. However, in sub-tropical countries like Pakistan, already low nutrient density diets are formulated for open type housing. The environment controlled farming has increased rapidly with rearing of Hubbard strain during the last few years. But very little information is available on the use of low CP diets in environment controlled housing using nutrient recommendations for Hubbard strain. This book provides this necessary information and suggests that reducing dietary CP level provides substantial economic returns without affecting the performance while reduction of CP with constant metabolizable energy to CP ratio results in reduced broiler performance and inferior carcass composition. It, therefore, will help in cost effective feed formulation and superior quality broiler production under the prevailing conditions. It is especially useful to feed millers, home mixers and integrators having poultry processing units.