Evaluating the nutritive profile of three insect meals and their effects to replace soya bean in broiler diet

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the comparative effect of maggot meal, silkworm meal and mealworm as dietary protein source on the production performance and some aspects of meat quality in broilers. In this regard, maggot meal was reared on chicken offal and poultry waste. Silkworm meal was obtained from silk industry, while mealworm was developed through beetles rearing. A total of 120-day-old broiler chicks were randomly divided into four groups where soya bean meal (M0) was replaced with maggot meal (M1), silkworm meal (M2) and mealworm (M3) respectively. Each group was further divided into three replicates. The study was carried out for a period of 5 weeks. Diets containing mealworm significantly reduced overall feed consumption and resulted into higher weight gain (p < .05). Lowest feed conversion ratio (FCR) was recorded for birds fed with mealworm diet (p < .05). Tenderness and juiciness of meat were higher (p < .05) in M3 compared to the control and other treatments. Mortality did not vary between the control and the treated groups. Therefore, it is concluded that insect meal is rich in essential nutrients and could be successfully used in broiler ration without compromising acceptability. In the light of this study, mealworm is the best choice in broiler ration, in comparison with maggot and silkworm.

Evaluation of Yellow Mealworm Meal as a Protein Feedstuff in the Diet of Broiler Chicks

“…All nutrients and amino acids of fresh and dried MWM were similar if adjusted to the same dry matter basis. Similar results with slight changes were reported by [12,14,15]. The difference in nutrient profile could be related to induced or natural conditions involved in the production or processing of insects [31].…”

“…Similar findings were reported for broiler chicks [15,32], and free-range chicks [33] fed a diet containing MWM. Inconsistent findings showed significantly higher growth performance of broiler chicks [3,12,13,20,23,34], barbary partridges [14], and Japanese quails [11] fed a MWM diet. In our study, MWM did not significantly improve growth performance which could be because of either chitin or polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) in MWM.…”

“…Moreover, supplementation with live maggots improved the growth rate, clutch size, egg weight, hatchability, and chick weight of free-range chickens [18] and reduced the fearfulness in young pullets [19]. In recent studies, significantly improved growth performance, blood profile, immune system, villous height, crypt depth, carcass, and meat quality was observed in broiler chickens [10,12,13,15,20], Japanese quails [11], and barbary partridges [14] fed on the diet containing dried MWM. Insect meal in broiler chicks' diet can improve the meat quality, which is due to the functional ingredients in the insect [21].…”

“…MWM contains high amounts of crude protein (CP) 25-60% and fat 15-40%. The recently reported values for CP are 47% dry matter (DM) [10], 53.8% (DM) [7], 46.44% [11], 54.4% [3], 53% [12], 45.83% [13], and 51.9% [14,15]. Protein from MWM is, in particular, high in essential amino acids.…”

Cafeteria-Type Feeding of Chickens Indicates a Preference for Insect (Tenebrio molitor) Larvae Meal

“…The data on nutrient composition of TM larvae meal indicate that protein value is similar to those found in other studies showing that insects are a good source this nutrient; in particular, T. molitor has an average protein content of 526 g/kg DM [4,17,28,29]. Moreover, Finke [16] mentioned that T. molitor has a sufficient amount of protein for the growth of rats and chickens, being nutritionally equivalent to fish meal and soybean meal.…”