Effect of feeding tannin cultivars on broiler chicks’ performance

A feeding trial was carried out in Kadoru campus, University of Juba. Six sorghum cultivars; Tabat and Safra, Umbenin and Wad Akar, Yarawasha and HSP 5907 with low, medium and high tannin contents respectively were subjected to a feeding trial using one day old chicks of Hubbard broilers strain. High tannin and low tannin sorghum grain based diets were highly consumed (p<0.05) compared to medium tannin sorghum grain-based diet. Sorghum cultivars within the same range of tannin content significantly differed (p<0.05) in their performance, Birds fed on low tannin-Safra sorghum based-diet showed a better body weight gain followed by those fed on Yarawasha, Tabat, Wad Akar and Umbenin sorghum-based diet respectively. Broiler’s overall performance showed that sorghum with high tannin content was better (p<0.05) than medium tannin sorghum. However, carcass and non-carcass characteristics showed insignificant (P>0.05) difference between the treatments. This indicates that in some instances, the negative effects of tannins are not correlated with the amount of tannin in the sorghum cultivar. Furthermore, the chemical nature of tannins modifies its final effect as such, and not all high tannin sorghum is harmful to broiler performance.