Abstract
The study was carried out to evaluate the effect of feeding earthworm meal (EWM) based diets on the performance characteristics and economic analysis of broiler chicken. Four hundred-day-old chicks of mixed sex were assigned to four dietary treatments (0.0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5% EWM) with 100 chicks per treatment. Each treatment was divided into four replicates with twenty-five birds per replicate. Diets were iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous in nature. The experiment which lasted for 56 days was laid out as a completely randomized design (CRD), and data collected was subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) using IBM SPSS statistics version 20. The results revealed that body weight gain (BWG) increased significantly (P<0.05) as the EWM increased in the diets. The highest weight gain was recorded for the EWM-based diets (diets 2-4). Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) was significantly higher (p<0.05) when EWM was added to the diets with diet 2 recording the best FCR. Interestingly, feeding EWM-based diets did not reduce growth performance. The rate of return of capital was highest for EWM-based diets with diet 2 recording the best. Generally, the percentage cost reduction increased as the levels of EWM inclusion increased. Furthermore, EWM could be considered as an ingredient of choice to partially replace fishmeal for broiler chicken with up to 1.5%. Conclusively, within the limit of this experiment, the partial replacement of fish meal with EWM could help to stem over- dependence of broiler farmers on the importation of fishmeal hence, the novel feedstuff (EWM) opens a window for better bio-availability of protein source and it could possibly reduce the production cost in the future.