Effect of dietary shrimp meal on growth performance, carcass quality, and immune response of broilers

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the effect of dietary shrimp meal supplementation on growth performance, carcass quality, and immune response of broilers. A total of 400 day-old male broilers were randomly allocated to 5 dietary treatments with 4 replicates of 20 chicks each. The experimental diets consisted of diets supplemented with shrimp meal at the levels of 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20%, respectively. The broilers were given access to feed and water ad libitum throughout the study. The results showed that diets supplemented with 15% of shrimp meal had no significantly effect on growth performance, carcass composition and meat colors (P>0.05). Moreover, blood urea nitrogen was decreased, whereas lysozyme content and monocyte were increased as increasing of dietary shrimp meal at 21-day-old broilers compared with the control diet (P<0.05). However, shrimp meal supplementation in diets up to 20% showed the negative effect on the growth performance (P<0.05). In conclusion, it is suggested that shrimp meal can be used as a protein source in broiler diets up to 15% in the diet.