Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

Vol 27, Issue 2, 2021; Page No.(841-846)

EFFICIENCIES AND GROWTH RATE OF CAGED FERAL BIRD, THE BLUE ROCK PIGEON (COLUMBA LIVIA)

T. Nirmala, Krishnaveni and K. Jency Priya

Abstract

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.