Effect of dietary vitamin D ₃ supplementation on meat tenderness, juiciness and flavour of indigenous venda cocks

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of dietary Vitamin D ₃ supplementation on sensory attributes (meat tenderness, juiciness and flavour) of indigenous Venda cock meat. Different supplementation levels (0, 2000, 4000, 6000 and 8000 IU) of dietary Vitamin D ₃ per kg DM (880 g kg ^-1 feed) feed were used. In this experiment, thirteen weeks old Venda cocks with a mean live weight of 1200±3 g were supplemented with the above different levels of Vitamin D ₃ for a period of seven days before slaughter. A 2 (postmortem aging of 0 or 24 h) ×5 (dietary Vitamin D ₃ levels) factorial arrangement in a complete randomized design was used for sensory evaluation of the meat. A quadratic equation was also used to determine Vitamin D ₃ supplementation levels for optimum meat tenderness, juiciness and flavour. Vitamin D ₃ supplementation had no effect on unaged meat tenderness, juiciness and flavour. However, Vitamin D ₃ supplementation improved (p<0.05) aged meat tenderness and flavour. Tenderness, juiciness and flavour of aged Venda cock meat were optimized at supplementation levels of 6830, 6894 and 9795 IU of Vitamin D ₃ per kg DM feed, respectively. It is concluded that Vitamin D ₃ supplementation improved tenderness and flavour of aged Venda cock meat.