EFFICIENCIES AND GROWTH RATE OF CAGED FERAL BIRD, THE BLUE ROCK PIGEON (COLUMBA LIVIA)T. Nirmala, Krishnaveni and K. Jency PriyaAbstract One of the most challenging aspects of feeding birds is a challenging aspect to take care of them in cages. Four pairs of pigeon were selected and fed with four different types of the food such as millet, millet-rice, millet-sorghum, and millet-wheat each with 50 g of feed during January-March, 2009. The birds fed with millet-rice, millet-sorghum and millet-wheat showed an increase of its body weight viz. 5, 17 and 30 g respectively. The amount of food consumed by the Columba livia between January and March was 5026.4 g. The food consumed and assimilation was high in millet-wheat low in millet-rice. The mean and standard deviation of net conversion efficiency, gross conversion efficiency, assimilation efficiency, assimilation rate, was high in millet-wheat but food metabolism was high in millet-sorghum. The food conversion was high in millet-wheat (78.3 ± 33.87) and it was high during March and low in January. |