Effect of almond hulls on the growth performance, body composition, digestive tract weight, and liver antioxidant capacity of broilers

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of graded inclusion of almond hulls on growth performance, body composition, digestive tract weight, and liver antioxidant capacity of broilers. A total of 420 one-day-old Cobb male chicks was randomly allocated to 5 experimental treatments with 6 replicates of 14 birds each for 19 d of age. The five dietary treatments consisted of a corn-soybean meal control diet and 4 almond hull treatments containing 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10% of almond hulls with 97.5, 95, 92.5, and 90% of the control diet, respectively. Feeding almond hulls at 10% reduced broiler body weight gain (P ≤ 0.048) and increased feed conversion ratio (FCR; P