A study of effects of coconut oil supplementation in diets of Noi crossbred chicken on
growth and meat production was done at an experimental animal farm in Binh Thuy
district and Department of Animal Science, Can Tho University of Vietnam. It was a
completely randomized design with five treatments and three replicates on 150 Noi
crossbred chicken at 28 days of age, body weight average of 296 ± 3.04 g/bird. There
were 10 chicken per each experimental unit with the same body weight. The
treatments were coconut oil (CO) supplementation at 5 different levels of 0, 2, 4, 6
and 8% of the concentrate basal diets (CO0, CO2, CO4, CO6 and CO8). The results
showed that when supplementing CO in the diets decreased the intakes of DM, OM
and CP, while EE and ME consumptions of birds significantly increased (PThe highest daily weight gain was found for the CO6 treatment. Carcass, breast meat
and thigh meat weights in the diets supplemented CO were significantly higher
(PIt was concluded that coconut oil could be used as energy supplement source in the
diets for growing Noi crossbred chicken. At the level of 6% coconut oil
supplementation in the basal concentrate diet of the chicken improved growth
performance and carcass value.
Key words: crossbred Noi chicken, coconut oil, growth rate and carcass performance