Performance of broiler chickens fed graded levels of dehulled mucuna sloanei meal in place of soy bean meal

The use of dehulled velvet bean (Mucuna sloanei) in place of soy bean meal in the diets of broiler chickens was investigated. The proximate, gross energy and the anti - nutritional factors in dehulled Mucuna sloanei were chemically analyzed. Also the dietary level of inclusion of dehulled Mucuna sloanei that will give good performance was investigated using 120 one Week old broiler birds. They were randomly allotted into 4 dietary treatments having 3 replicates and 10 birds per replicate in a completely randomized design experiment. The diets were iso-caloric and iso –nitrogenous. Diet 1 was soybean based while diets 2, 3 and 4 contained 5, 7.5 and 10% dehulled Mucuna sloanei respectively. The experiment lasted for 49 days. The proximate composition particularly the crude protein (27.42%) and gross energy value (3.189Kcal/g) respectively showed that dehulled Mucuna sloanei is a potential feed ingredient .The presence of anti -nutritional factors such as L- Dopa, tannin, hydro- cyanide (HCN) and trypsin inhibitors were also confirmed. There were significant differences ((P<0.05)) for all the parameters measured except % mortality. It favoured the control diet in all parameters considered (final live weight, daily weight gain, % mortality, feed conversion ratio, % dressed weight, organ weight, and feed cost of the diets) as opposed to diets containing the test feed stuff. (Dehulled Mucuna sloanei) From the above results, soybean could not be replaced by dehulled Mucuna sloanei even at 5 %dietary level of inclusion.