Nutritional Evaluation of Distillery Sludge and Its Effect As a Substitute of Canola Meal on Performance of Broiler Chickens (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Poultry industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in developing countries like Pakistan with an average growth rate of 8 to 10 percent annually (Economic Survey, 2009-2010). Due to rapid increase in human population and poultry production, there is an active competition between human beings and poultry for feed. This results in scarcity and high cost of feedstuffs which contribute poor performance to the poultry as poultry feed accounts for 65 to 75 percent of the total cost of production (Esonu et al., 2006). This unprecedented increase in the cost of conventional feedstuffs has necessitated intensive investigations to explore alternate and non-conventional feed sources available at cheaper rates without reducing the nutritive value of the diet. Production and utilization of single cell protein (SCP) is an important attempt to solve these problems (Shahzad et al., 2011). The term SCP refers to the dead, dried cells of beneficial species of microbes such as yeast, bacteria, fungi, and algae (Ware, 1977). It is characterized by high concentration of nucleotides, inositol and glutamic acid (Silva et al., 2009). Yeast protein has beneficial effect on broiler performance (Silva et al., 2009; Pelicia et al., 2010; Haldar et al., 2011).