An experiment was conducted to study the effect of different crop residues as litter material on performance of commercial broilers. Three hundred day old Vencob commercial broilers were divided into four groups of seventy five birds each and were reared in deep litter system separately on ground nut shell (GNS), sorghum husk (SRH), red gram husk (RGS) and bajra (pearl millet) husk (BJH) as litter material for six weeks. The birds were fed adlibitum with commercial broiler feed comprised CP 20% and ME 2700 kcal/kg. During the experiment, daily feed intake (FI), water intake (WI) and weekly weight gain (WG), feed conversion ratio (FCR) and mortality rate were recorded. The dressing percentage at the end of the trial was estimated. The average weekly FI (g/d/b), WI (ml/d/b), WG (g/d/b), FCR and mortality rate (%) of birds reared on GNS, SRH, RGH and BJH were 104.3±25.7, 105.2±26.7, 91.0±21.0, 91.1±20.9; 180.8±43.7, 178.0±42.6, 282.8±75.2, 291.0±76.7; 44.4±9.8, 44.5±9.8, 45.2±8.3, 47.3±9.2; 2.3±0.2, 2.3±0.2, 2.0±0.2, 1.9±0.2 and 0.7±0.3, 0.5±0.2, 0.2±0.2, 0.4±0.3, respectively. There is no significance difference among the treatment groups. Similarly, the intake of important nutrients like dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, crude fiber, nitrogen free extractives, and energy have not shown any significance difference among the groups as well as between the weeks. The dressing percentage recorded at the end of the experiment in groups GNS, SRH, RGH and BJH were 67.5, 77.5, 68.2 and 74.1, respectively. These results clearly indicated that the performance of the birds reared on crop residues were equally good in comparison with birds reared on GNS. Hence, these crop residue can be used without any adverse effect as litter material to rear the birds on deep litter system.
