| dc.description.abstract | Woody Breast condition (WB) is detrimental for water holding capacity of the meat (WHC). Two dietary experiments were conducted by varying the ingredients used to formulate traditional corn-soybean meal diets (SBM) in the attempt to minimize the negative impact of WB. In the first study, fast growing, high breast yielding broiler chicks were grown to d 49 and d 56 of age under simulated industry parameters. The birds were fed an iso-nitrogenous and iso-energetic traditional SBM diet, or a diet where the SBM was fully replaced by canola meal (CM), with ad libitum access to feed and water. After processing, the carcass yield (CY), breast yield (BY), drip loss (DL), pH, meat color (L*, a*, b*), and cook loss (CL) were determined to assess WHC. The incidence of WB severity of the fillets was also determined. In the second study, the same parameters were measured on d 42 birds fed four different diets.
A third study was conducted to reduce the cooking times of the bigger breast fillets used to determine CL values using the oven method (OM), by using 3-D printed cutting molds to standardize the meat sample size. The data were subjected to analysis for WB incidence, and ranked analysis of variance. In experiment 1, the CM at d 49 reduced % incidence of WB severity and minimized meat quality parameters issues. In experiment 2, the Mix diet produced the lowest % incidence and severity of WB, but the harvested meat had a higher pH value. In contrast, when analyzing WB severity, pH was highest in the moderately affected fillets. In both studies, the reduction in WB was at the cost of BY. The modified OM was able to reduce cooking time and produce similar CL values to the OM. | |
