ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of dietary nutrient levels on performance, carcass yield, commercial cuts, digestibility and economical viability of broilers from 1 to 42 days of age. During the experiment, 180 COBB 500™ chicks were housed in metal batteries and subjected to a completely randomized design in a 2x3 factorial arrangement, of two sexes and three diets (male, female and mixed), totaling 6 treatments and 6 repetitions of 5 birds each. Data were subjected to statistical analysis and the means were compared using the Tukey test, at 5% probability. The results indicate the effect of sex on performance and commercial cuts, except for breast and thigh fillets, in which males and females showed similar results when given the mixed diet. The influence of the nutritional levels on performance, digestibility and commercial cuts was observed, in which the female diet showed the highest results for feed intake, body weight and weight gain, in addition to greater retention of protein and crude energy. For drumstick and abdominal fat yield, the highest values were obtained using the mixed diet and the female diet, and the lowest values were obtained using the male diet. Regarding economic viability, the female diet showed the highest return per unit of Real (R$) spent on feed. Therefore, these data prove that the female diet had a positive effect when provided to both sexes, and it may be a promising alternative for its application at the production level.

ABSTRACT This experiment aimed to evaluate the utilization of firewood ash as calcium source in the initial diet of broiler chickens. One hundred and twenty eight broiler chickens of Cobb-500® strain, from 1 to 21 days of age, were randomly distributed in four treatments with four repetitions of eight birds each, been four female and four male. The experimental diets were corn-soybean based, been isoenergetic and isonutrients, and had 0, 0.32, 0.98 and 1.27% of firewood ash as calcium source. The firewood ash utilized had 23.8% of calcium, 0.39% of total phosphorus, and 0.11% of sodium. The experimental treatments did not influence the feed intake, body weight, body weight gain, and food conversion from 1 to 7, 1 to 14, and 1 to 21 days of age. The tibia and femur thickness and length at 21 days of age were not altered by treatments. It was concluded that the firewood ash can be used as calcium sourcereplacing limestone in the initial diet of broiler chickens, without change the performance and the bone development.

ABSTRACT Bovine meat and bone meal (MBM) has been used as a low-cost protein source in corn- and soybean meal-based poultry diets. However, to date, no studies investigating the effect of the dietary inclusion of MBM on the performance of Japanese quails and on egg production costs were found in literature. In this study, 600 Japanese quails in lay were distributed in a completely randomized experimental design consisting of six treatments (replacement levels of soybean meal by MBM:0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5%) with five replicates of 20 birds each to investigate if MBM is a viable alternative to maintain or to improve the live and economic performances of these birds. Treatments consisted of a control diet, based on corn and soybean meal, with no inclusion of MBM, and diets formulated with increasing levels (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5%) of MBM inclusion at the expense of soybean meal. The studied parameters were evaluated in four periods of 28 days each. Live performance parameters (egg weight, g; average egg production, %; egg weight, g; feed intake, g; feed conversion ratio per egg mass, kg/kg and per dozen eggs, dz/kg; and livability, %); egg quality parameters (proportion of egg components, yolk, albumen, eggshell %; egg specific weight, g/cm3); and economic parameter (bio-economic nutritional index) were determined. Only egg weight, egg specific weight, and eggshell percentage were affected (p<0.05) by the treatments. Our results show that inclusion of bovine meat and bone meal can be added to the diet of Japanese quails in lay, causing no performance losses and promoting feed cost savings up to 5.24%.