article · Animals
An evaluation of replacing yellow corn with olive cake meal in broiler chicken feed examined growth, fat deposition, plasma lipids, and muscle fatty acid composition. The trial tested diets with zero, five, ten, and twenty percent olive cake meal across four hundred and eighty male broilers. Chickens receiving five and ten percent olive cake meal showed better body weight and feed conversion ratios than those given the twenty percent diet. While nitrogen retention and ether extract digestibility showed no improvement, the olive cake diets led to reduced abdominal fat and lowered total plasma cholesterol compared to the control diet. Furthermore, birds fed olive cake meal demonstrated higher breast muscle levels of vitamin E, oleic, linoleic, linolenic, and arachidonic acids, alongside lower palmitic acid. Substituting corn with ten percent olive cake meal proved the most effective formulation.
Poultry producers constantly seek alternative, cost-effective feed ingredients that maintain bird health while producing higher quality meat. Demonstrating that an agro-industrial by-product like olive cake meal can replace part of the corn in broiler rations helps lower abdominal fat and enrich meat with beneficial fatty acids and vitamin E without compromising bird growth.
This research indicates an applied, tested pathway for animal feed manufacturers and poultry producers to integrate olive cake meal into commercial broiler diets at up to ten percent. By substituting conventional corn, feed mills can repurpose olive processing by-products to formulate rations that improve meat lipid profiles and reduce carcass fat. Further commercial-scale validation would be needed to establish supply chain feasibility and full economic returns outside controlled experimental settings.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
The current study focused exclusively on evaluating the effects of replacing corn with olive cake meal (OCM) in the diet of broilers on their growth performance, abdominal fat, selected plasma parameters, and muscle fatty acid (FA) content. A total of 480 one-day-old male broiler chickens (Ross 308) were divided into four treatment groups with 12 replicates/treatment. The control group was fed the base diet, whereas the second to fourth groups were fed diets of corn with 5%, 10%, and 20% contents of OCM, respectively. Broilers fed with the 5% and 10% OCM diets showed better body weight (<i>p</i> = 0.04) and feed conversion ratio than the 20% OCM group (<i>p</i> < 0.048). Both nitrogen retention and ether extract digestibility were not improved by replaced corn with OCM. Replacing corn with OCM led to a decreased abdominal fat percentage (<i>p</i> = 0.023) compared with the control group. Birds in the OCM groups showed the lowest total cholesterol values (<i>p</i> = 0.038). The breast muscle (musculus pectoralis superficialis) content of oleic and linoleic, linolenic, and arachidonic acids was significantly high in birds fed with OCM diets. However, their palmitic acid level was significantly decreased. Vitamin E was increased by increasing the OCM level. Thus, we concluded that replacing corn with OCM, especially at a 10% level, is more effective than other replacement levels in improving growth performance, plasma lipid profile, and muscle FA content, as well as in causing a reduction in abdominal fat in broilers.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.3390/ani11082240
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
