Effect of different ratios of male-to-female in broilers on performance and nutrients digestibility

Male and female broiler chickens differ in performance and this will cause unwanted experimental errors in research. For this reason, single-sex or mixed-sex broilers are used in most studies. This study aimed to assess the performance differences between groups of chickens with varying male/female ratios to determine how sex ratio can affect performance criteria. Birds (N = 550) were separated by sex and placed in 11 groups (pens) according to the male/female ratios, including group 1 (10 males + 0 female), group 2 (9 males + 1 female), group 3 (8 males + 2 females), group 4 (7 males + 3 females), group 5 (6 males + 4 females), group 6 (5 males + 5 females), group 7 (4 males + 6 females), group 8 (3 males + 7 females), group 9 (2 males + 8 females), group 10 (1 male + 9 females), and group 11 (0 male + 10 females). The results showed that male broiler chickens had higher feed intake and body weight gain than female broiler chickens, but the feed conversion ratio was not affected by gender. The digestibility of phosphorus, bone strength, bone density, bone calcium and phosphorus, pH, and redness and water holding capacity of meat were higher in male broilers. The dripping loss was higher in female broilers. This study showed that male and female broiler chickens differed in most of the parameters examined in the research, and the use of separate breeding affected the research results.