A 21-day feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of palm oil supplementation on the performance of broiler starter birds fed palm kernel meal based diets. One hundred and twenty (120) one-week-old Anak broilers were randomly assigned to five (5) treatment diets, each treatment diet was replicated four times at six birds per replicate in completely Randomised Design. The birds were fed diets containing varying levels of 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40% palm kernel meal (PKM). Palm oil (PO) was incorporated at 0.5 and 1.5% into the diets containing 30 and 40% PKM respectively. There were significant differences (P0.05) in the average live weight, average body weight gain average daily weight gain, average total feed intake, and feed conversion ratio among birds fed the treatment diets. Results of this study showed that PKM could be included in the diet of broiler starter birds (1-4) week old) up to 20% without palm oil supplementation but up to 30-40% with palm oil supplementation, without adverse effect on the performance of the birds.

Journal of Applied Chemistry and Agricultural Research Vol. 7 2000-2001: pp. 127-132