Evaluation of Precision Feeding to Enhance Broiler Growth Performance

The effects of precision feeding regimes on broiler performance, organ weight, nutrient utilization, carcass yield, and calculated wholesale returns were investigated over 42 days. The treatments consisted of a standard four-phase commercial diet as the control, a precision nutrition blend diet based on a daily nutrient requirement, a precision nutrition adjusted diet based on weekly bird weight, and a standard commercial blend diet. Each dietary treatment was replicated 10 times with 11 birds per replicate. A total of 440 male Ross 308 (Aviagen, Goulburn, NSW, Australia) broiler chickens were offered experimental diets from days 11 to 42 post-hatch. Dietary treatments did not affect the feed intake and weight gain over the entire study. However, a reduced weight corrected FCR (higher feed efficiency) was observed in birds fed a precision nutrition adjusted blend diet compared to those fed the control diet from days 11 to 42 (p < 0.001). There were no significant differences in feed costs between treatments. Birds offered the precision nutrition adjusted diet improved AME (p = 0.002) measured from days 25 to 27 compared to the blended standard diet. Over the majority of time points, the precision nutrition adjusted diet significantly reduced the coefficient of variation in bird weight as compared to the control diet (p < 0.026).