The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of replacing soybean meal by raw pigeon pea in the diet of free-range broilers reared in a semi-intensive system. Five hundred twenty-five broilers of the Caipira Pesadão lineage were used, with initial age of 35 days, distributed in five treatments with five replicates of 21 birds each. Treatments consisted of the replacement of 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20% of soybean meal by ground raw pigeon pea. Weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion, carcass and cuts yield, pancreas weight, and meat quality were evaluated. Replacing soybean meal by pigeon pea in up to 15.45% in the diet of free-range meat broilers, with age of 57 to 71 days, does not change weight gain. Increasing levels of pigeon pea in the diet do not affect carcass yield, pancreas weight, and meat quality parameters.
Cajanus cajan; alternative feed; free-range birds; performance; carcass yield.