| To investigate the effect of different water hyacinth feed proportion on the performance of Youxian sheldrake, 50
Youxian sheldrakes (3 weeks old) were randomly divided into 5 groups (n=10), and fed with mixed feed of 0 (control), 40%, 30%,
20% and 10% of water hyacinth for 8 weeks. Then, four indexes including feed intake, weight gain, feed conversation and dressing
percentage were tested and used to evaluate the effect of water hyacinth feed proportion on the performance of Youxian Sheldrake.
The result showed that in four experimental groups, the mixed feed with 20% of water hyacinth exhibited the best performance of
Youxian sheldrake, the feed intake reached 34 096(依350)g, the weight gain reached 10 728(依110)g, the feed conversation was 33.8(依
4)%, and the dressing percentage was 65.6 (依5)%, the four indexes of performance were better than those of other three experimental
groups (P<0.05), but worse than those of the control group (P<0.05). It suggested that water hyacinth mixed feed had value to be used
for the production of Youxian sheldrake, and the adaptive proportion of water hyacinth was about 20%. |
