Effect of Moringa oleifera forage meal intake on digestive indicators of colostomized broilers

Resumen

In order to determine the effect of Moringa oleifera (moringa) forage meal intake cv. supergenius on digestive indicators in colostomized broilers, a total of 24 male broilers (hybrid EB34) of 47 d of age and 1.95 kg of live weight as average were used, and allocated in individual cages for metabolism. A completely randomized design with three treatments and eight repetitions was used. The treatments consisted of control diet (soybean-maize) and inclusion of 10 % and 20 % of moringa forage meal. It was demonstrated that the birds with 10 and 20% of moringa forage meal increased the dry matter (P <0.001) and nitrogen (P <0.05) intake with respect to the control diet. When determining the apparent digestibility of nutrients,
there was decrease of dry matter, N and cell wall components (NDF, ADF and cellulose) with the intake of 20% of the fibrous source. The 10% inclusion did not differ from the control diet. When evaluating the gastrointestinal tract morphometric, the intake of moringa forage meal increased gizzard weight regarding the control diet (P <0.0001) and the caeca reached the maximum lengths with a 20% inclusion. It was shown that the intake of 10 % of moringa forage meal did not affect the nutrients digestibility and caused higher digestive activity, when causing
morphological modifications. This indicates beneficial results for the digestive physiology of broilers.
Key words: birds, colostomy, nutrients digestibility, fibrous source, morphometric indicators