Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

Soyabean, one of the main ingredients commonly employed as a source of vegetable protein in broiler diets is expensive and may sometimes be unavailable. Thus, there is the need to assess the utilization of other legumes in broiler diets. Therefore, effects of dietary toasted sesame seed meal (TSSM) on growth, hematological and selected serum biochemical indices of broiler chickens was evaluated in a feeding experiment lasting 56 days. One hundred and eighty 1-day old Arbor acre chicks (39.2±0.15g/chicken) were randomly divided into five treatments. Each treatment was in triplicate of twelve birds per replicate. Graded TSSM was included at the expense of full fat soybean meal in the basal starter and finishers broiler rations viz; 0 (T1), 25 (T2), 50 (T3), 75 (T4) and 100% (T5). The diets and water were offered to respective birds ad libitum. The design of the experiment was a completely randomized design. Feed intake, weight gain and final weights of birds were significantly reduced (p<0.05) across treatments by increased dietary inclusion of TSSM while feed conversion ratio of birds increased significantly with increasing dietary TSSM (P < 0.05). Also, the packed cell volume (PCV), hemoglobin (Hb) and white blood cell (WBC) varied significantly (P < 0.05) with TSSM inclusion. However, the red blood cell (RBC), heterophils, lymphocytes, monocytes and eosinophils were not affected (P > 0.05) by the graded TSSM in the diets. Serum total protein, alanine amino transferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), cholesterol, triglycerides and very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) were also significantly different (P < 0.05) among treatments with no trial effect (P > 0.05) on serum albumin, creatinine, high density lipoprotein and aspartate amino transferase (AST). Conclusively, beneficial effects of dietary toasted sesame seed based diets on performance, haematology and biochemical indices of broiler chickens were obvious up to 25% levels of inclusion.