Ground pelletd citrus pulp in ration for pullets

Abstract

As the World’s top citrus juice exporter, Brazil has nowadays a potential for more than two hundreds tons of dried citrus pulp, annually. An experiment was run using 128 Leghorn pullets aging 65 days to 50% egg’s production. A randomized complete-block design was followed, with two treatments and four replicates of 16 individuals. Corn meal was partially replaced for ground pelleted citrus pulp, at 10% level. No statistical significant differences were noticed for age at sexual A maturity (days): Treatment A = 156.54 and Treatment B = 155.37 S (^m) = 1.27; first egg’s weight (g ) : A = 42.06 and B = 41.56; S (^m ) = .36; average egg's weight to 50% production (g ) : A = 45.74 and B = 45.95; S (^m ) = .75; weight gains (k g ): A = 7.33 and B = 7.48; S (^m ) - .13; A feed conversion (k g ): A = 7.11 and B = 7.35; S (^m ) = .13. Considering these results it is reasonable to assume that ground pelleted citrus pulp is a fair ingredient for pullet’s ration.