Growth Efficiency of Local Chickens Using Sweet Potato Vine with Concentration Feed as a Basal Diet

The experiment was conducted at the animal experimental station of the Faculty of Animal Sciences, Royal University of Agriculture, commenced from 10 January to 14 March, 2022. The CRD (Completely Randomized Design) was used with 5 treatments and 4 replications. The 500 chicks at one-day-old, local bread, were purchased from farmers who run their small scale hatchery farm. The chicks were kept together till 21 days old, and then were allocated randomly into in five diets (treatments), 25 chicks per replication. The feed formulas for this study were designed and calculated to maintain a protein content of approximately 17%, dividing into 5 feed formulas (Treatments), such as concentrated feed only (control treatment: T0), plus 10% of fresh sweet potato vine (T1), plus 20% of fresh sweet potato vine (T2), plus 30% of fresh sweet potato vine (T3) andplus 20% of sweet potato vine meal (T4). The results showed that the treatment T1, had a similar final weight with the treatment T4, but was slightly lower than the treatment T0 which used concentrated feed alone.Feed intake and FCR (Feed Conversion Ratio) were not significantly different among those treatments. In conclusion, the average daily weight gain of chickens seemed to decrease with increasing the level of fresh sweet potato vine.Thus, the optimum level of fresh sweet potato vine was 10%, which may have little effect on the growth performance of local chickens. In addition, it was not far different from the positive control treatment and the treatment using sweet potato vine meal.However, the producers can increase the amount of sweet potato vine in feed formula by processing it into meal and mixing with concentrated feed or using as feed ingredients.