Effect of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) Grain on Carcass Characteristics of Cobb 500 Broiler Chickens

Introduction: There is a need to search for locally available alternative sources of protein to use as feed for poultry. The possible sources of protein for poultry are the grains of legume plants. Grains of legume plants are characterized by protein that contains high level of lysine and low level of methionine. Cowpea as well as other peas can be excellent sources of dietary protein in animal nutrition.

The highest source of protein which is soybean does not produce in Tigray National Regional State. On the other side, the small scale poultry production has increased from time to time. In this case, feed source is the major challenging in the small scale poultry production in our region especial in the Central Zone of Tigray. Hence this study is designed to evaluate the recently introduced cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) variety in the region as a source of protein for poultry and evaluate its effect on carcass characteristics of Cobb 500 chickens with the following specific objectives:

Objective:

To evaluate the effect of feeding different inclusion levels of cowpea grain on carcass characteristics of Cobb 500 Broiler chickens.
To evaluate the effect of different inclusion levels of cowpea grain on lameness of Cobb 500 broiler chickens.
Methodology: 300 day old Cobb 500 broiler chicks were used for the experiment. They were distributed randomly in to 20 pens with 15 chicks per replication. Five different feed treatments were used to evaluate the carcass characteristics of Cobb 500 broiler chickens fed different inclusion levels of cowpea grain for the life time of 49 days. The research was conducted using completely randomized design (CRD). Inclusion levels of cowpea grain in the treatments were 0% (T1), 5% (T2), 10% (T3), 15% (T4) and 20% (T5). At the end of the experiment four birds 2 male and 2 female from each replication were taken to evaluate carcass characteristics of Cobb 500 broiler chickens.

Results: The result of the study revealed that, there was no significant difference on carcass yield, and gut parts of male and female Cobb 500 broiler chickens except for drumstick weight and drumstick percentage greater in male, whereas, abdominal fat percentage was significantly (P<0.05) higher for female than male broiler chickens. Lameness was occurred in all treatment, T1, T2, T3, T4 and T5 which was 15%, 11.67%, 10%, 13.33%, 15%, respectively.

Conclusion and Recommendation: This study indicated that inclusion of cowpea from 5-20% in the diet of broiler chickens have no adverse effect on carcass characteristics of Cobb 500 broiler chickens. Whereas, effect of cowpea inclusion on layer’s and dual purpose chickens performance needs further investigation.