Bailan Daguob Dalisay, Juan Miguel Incensario, Hannah Tricia P. Regoniel (March 2013)
Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus – Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PSHS WVC), Brgy. Bito-on, Jaro, Iloilo City 5000, Philippines
ABSTRACT
Chickens are essential in food supply and understanding some of their factors like feed preference can lead to improvement in the production. This study focuses on the effects of scents in the feed preference of the chicken Gallus gallus domesticus. As test specimen, 15 chickens were bought and placed in cages containing four feeders with feeds with unscented (control), banana, carabao grass, and corn scents. They were fed for three weeks. A five-minute test was conducted every weekend. The net weights of the feeds in the test were gathered. From week one to week three the net weights of feeds consumed by the chicks decreased, from 142g to 70g in the unscented feed, 145g to 35g in the banana-scented feed, 135 to 27g in the carabao grass-scented feed, and 165g to 11.5 in the corn-scented feed. The data was analyzed using two-way Analysis of Variance. The data presents sufficient evidence that net weight of feed consumed by chickens depends on the time of feeding (i.e., weekly). This indicated by an F value of 35.13 with a highly significant probability value of 0.000010. There was a significant difference between the net weight feed of the control and the scented feeds although there’s a little significant difference between the scented feeds (a=0.05). The scents and day of feeding has interaction in affecting the amount of feeds consumed by the chicks. Based on the results it was concluded that chickens prefer feeds with scents than the unscented one although it is not certain which among the scents is the most preferred.