A Group of IPB Students Formulated Local Feed Ingredients for Special Cross-breed Chicken
Chicken is one type of livestock that is in great demand by the community. Poultry are kept in most areas of the world and provide an acceptable form of animal protein to most people throughout the world. Chickens are indigenous chicken that has the potential to be developed as a commercial chicken. Slow growth to achieve slaughter weight compared to broiler becomes an obstacle for farmers in raising this chicken. Broiler production is characterized by its high economic return due to its short production cycle. Intensively kept broiler is seen as a way of rapidly increasing animal protein supplies for rapidly increasing urban populations. Broilers are reared and prepared for meat. They are relatively low priced, reproduce rapidly, and have a high rate of productivity. Moreover, they are very susceptible to disease. Genetic improvement, cross-breed between broiler and village chicken is expected to maximize live performance in poultry production, has allowed a reduction of age to market.
The most the single decisive factor for chicken farming is the feed. Feed is needed chicken in its growth. In order to meet the feed requirements, farmers assess its feeding system uses a high feed conversion ratio. The feed conversion ratio of village chicken is higher than broiler, this indicates that effects of feed form on live performance of village chicken is less efficient than of broilers. Commonly used feed for those farming chicken is commercial feed. It is a formulated and nutritious food, but the price is expensive. Commercial feed is also difficult to find in rural areas, they cause problems for farmers who raise this cross-breed broiler and village chicken. If you your chicken are to grow fast, to reach the market weight in the shortest period, you should balance between the feed cost quality. Therefore, farmers should be empowered and their local chicken feed should be formulated to ensure adequate nutrition for the production of cross-breed broiler village chicken, and they should be affordable by the community. Local feed ingredients are corn, rice bran, fish flour and indigofera flour.
Muhammad Lukmanudin, student of the Faculty of Animal Husbandry of Bogor Agricultural University (FAPET IPB), and his team joined Program Kreativitas Mahasiswa bidang Penelitian (PKM-P Student Creativity Program for Research). The team members were: Muhammad Ramadhan, and Novi Herlina. She the student who implemented the study on local feed formulation. The feed was formulated to meet the nutritional requirements for cross-breed village chicken. This study has been running for approximately three months now, and will be completed by the end of June. The location of the study is FAPET IPB’ cages uses 60 cross-breed village chicken. After 12 (twelve) weeks of habituating to feeding conditions, their growth were observed and evaluated. The study revealed that it has good results, the cross-breed village chicken make best use of locally – available pelleted local feed. The pellet is a mixture of corn, rice bran, fish flour and indigofera flour. In the final stages of the research, we will measure the weight of chicken weight and also see the quality of its meats.
As a “research student”, he expected that the group study program will be the new breakthrough in accelerating the cutting weight of the cross-breed village chicken. This study is also expected to increase the enthusiasm of the community to raise village chicken-broiler cross-breed which its growing period similar to the other races chicken in general. Finally, he hopes that locally-made feed will substitute the commercial feed for the cross-breed chicken that is less safe to eat. (Wied)
