Can black soldier fly Desmodium intortum larvae-based diets enhance the performance of Cobb500 broiler chickens and smallholder farmers' profit in Kenya?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the performance of broiler chickens fed on 3 black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) (Hermetia illucens) and Greenleaf desmodium (Desmodium intortum)-based meals. We evaluated growth performance, carcass quality, and profitability under various commercial pathways (doorstep, retail, whole, and assorted). Desmodium and BSFL powders were formulated into 3 ratios: T1 25:75, T2 50:50, and T3 75:25. A commercial feed was used as a control. One hundred and twenty mixed-sex 1-day-old broiler chicks (Cobb) were reared in pens for 42 d in a completely randomized design. The chickens were weighed weekly to monitor their growth rate. After the 42-day rearing period, they were slaughtered for carcass quality evaluation and recording of the weights of internal organs. During the initial growth phase (7-21 d), significant effects of fish meal replacement were found on the chickens' average weight (P < 0.001), average daily body weight gain (P < 0.001), average daily feed intake (P < 0.001), and feed conversion ratio (P < 0.001). However, during the second phase (21-42 d), no significant effect of the replacement was detected except on average daily feed intake (P = 0.003). No significant differences were found in terms of the relative weights of internal organs. It was found that Desmodium-BSFL-based feeds were more profitable than the control feed, and the assorted and retail modes of sale generated more revenue compared to when the chickens were sold at doorstep and on whole-chicken basis. The return on investment was higher for a push-pull adopter compared to a non-adopter. The study found that a BSFL-Desmodium mixture can be a valuable replacement for the protein component in conventional feed and would provide a new impetus for the adoption of push-pull.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".