Moreover pelleting also increases the average particle
size of the diet and this can affect the development of
digestive organs, particularly the gizzard and intestine. In
this current study, the birds fed the pelleted / crumbled
CM diet had heavier and bigger gizzards (Table 5).
Bigger particle size, higher feed intake, coupled with
higher volume of digesta in the gizzards, of birds fed the
pelleted/ crumbled CM diet may be the reason of the
increase in gizzard size. This finding is consistent with
the previous finding of Dahlke et al. (2003). The ratio of
digesta weight in the gizzard to the digesta weight in the
duodenum was 1.63, 1.93 and 2.16 for the fine ground,
mixed and crumbled CM diets respectively. The quantity
of digesta in the duodenum of birds fed the fine ground
CM diets was more than that of birds fed the coarser
crumbled CM diet or mixed particle size diet in this
current study.