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Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2013, Vol. 22 ›› Issue (4): 340-345.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb20130440 

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Effects of alfalfa flavones on growth performance and carcass quality of female Chongren chickens

OUYANG Ke-hui1, XIONG Xiao-wen1, WANG Wen-jun2, HU Yao2, ZHOU Ping-fang2, LIU Dang-sheng3   

  1. 1.College of Animal Science and Technology, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China;
    2.College of Food Science and Engineering, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China;
    3.Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Station of Jishui County, Jishui 331600, China
  • Online:2013-08-20 Published:2013-08-20

Abstract: To investigate the effects of alfalfa flavones on the growth performance, slaughter performance and muscular ingredients of female Chongren chickens at a late growth stage, 480 30dayold healthy female Chongren chicken were randomly allotted to 4 groups with 4 replicates per group and 30 birds per replicate. The groups of Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ and Ⅳ were fed the basal diet supplemented with 0, 0.05%, 0.10% and 0.15% alfalfa flavones respectively. There was a pretrial period of 5 days followed by an experimental period of 28 days. Compared with the control group, the average daily feed intake (ADFI) of the treatment groups supplemented with alfalfa flavones had a slight tendency to decrease (P>0.05). There were slight increasing trends in the average daily gain (ADG) and feed conversion efficiency in the treatment groups (P>0.05). The best effect on increase of ADG (3.27%) was in Group Ⅲ, while the ratio of feed/gain (F/G) decreased by 5.82% (P>0.05). There were no significant differences in the slaughter contents of protein and inosine monophosphate (IMP) in muscles of the groups (P>0.05), but a supplement of alfalfa flavones significantly inhibited fat deposition. The subcutaneous fat thickness and intermuscular fat width of groups Ⅲ were lower than those of the control group by 26.22% and 20.53% (P<0.05) respectively. The percentage of abdominal fat and content of fat in thigh muscle of groups Ⅳ were lower than those of the control group by 11.66% (P<0.01) and 9.35% (P<0.05) respectively. In conclusion, alfalfa flavones reduced ADFI and fat deposition without affecting the growth performance at the later growth stage of female Chongren chickens. The best alfalfa flavone dose was 0.10%.

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