Growth and meat quality of broiler chicks fed with fermented fish viscera silage.

Fermented silage from fish viscera was prepared by homogenizing with lO%molasses,O.5%propionic
acid (antimycotic agent) and 0.02% ethoxyquin (antioxidant). Isonitrogenous (21% protein) and
isocaloric (ME=2900K Cal/kg) diets for broiler chicks were formulated replacing 25% and 50% fish meal
by fish viscera silage. Fish meal at 8% (w/w) was kept as control. Consumption of diets containing silage
was 7.3% lower, resulting into about 5% reduction in growth compared to control. Comulative feed
conversion ratio was in the range of 2.20 to 2.29 and was not influenced by diets. Silage also had no marked
effect on dressing yields (68.2-68.4%), meat: bone ratio (3.9-4.0) and muscle composition. Analysis of
ranksums for sensory quality attributes of muscle from both silage fed and fish meal fed birds indicated
that the differences were not significant (P>0.05). The findings suggest that fish meal upto 50% can be
replaced by fish viscera silage in broiler diets without significantly affecting growth and meat quality.