Meat quality of broiler chickens fed diets with or without supplemental vitamin-mineral premix at the finisher phase

Abstract

The effects of withdrawing supplemental dietary vitamin-mineral premix (DVMP) on meat quality attributes of finisher broiler chickens were investigated in this study. In a completely randomized design, 240 unsexed Arbor Acres broiler chicken strain at day 28 were randomly allotted to two treatments, each replicated ten times, a replicate had 12 chicks. Treatment 1 (T1) was the control diet with supplemental DVMP, while Treatment 2 (T2) was without any supplemental DVMP. The diets were fed to the respective chicks for 14 days. Meat colour, flavour, texture and juiciness were not significantly affected (p>0.05) by the DVMP withdrawal. Conversely, meat tenderness (3.8 and 7.0) was significantly higher (P<0.05) for the broiler meat from T2 than T1, while the overall acceptability (7.9 and 6.30) was significantly higher (P<0.05) for meat from T1. There was no significant effect of the treatment (p>0.05) on meat shear force, however, cooking loss and water holding capacity were significantly higher (p<0.05)for T2. Except for ash content which was significantly higher (p<0.05) for T1 (4.01%) than T2 (2.4%), other proximate indices were similar (p>0.05). There was no effect of the treatment (p>0.05) on other chemical indices of meat (pH and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances). Therefore, DVMP was invaluable for the meat quality indices of finisher broilers.