The dynamics of dietary supplementation of probiotic and synbiotic on blood profile in turkey

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary probiotic and synbiotic supplementation on serum metabolites and haematological parameters of turkey poults. One hundred and twenty-eight (128) seven-day-old poults were used and the study lasted for 7 weeks. Birds were randomly allotted to 4 dietary treatments sorted by body weights consisting of 4 replicates of 8 birds each. The basal diet was a corn-soyabean diet formulated according to the recommendations of NRC for starter and grower phases. Diet 1 was the negative control without additive, diets 2, 3 and 4 contained antibiotic, probiotic, and synbiotic respectively. Blood samples were collected from the jugular vein of 2 poults per replicate for serum and haematological parameters. Results showed that there were significant (P<0.05) differences in the red blood cell (RBC), haemoglobin (Hb), packed cell volume (PCV), monocytes and eosinophils of the turkey poults. Highest values of RBC (4.42 x 10⁶/µl), Hb (13.00g/100ml) and PCV (39%) were recorded for birds on synbiotic diet which was comparable to those on antibiotic diet. No effect of supplemental feed additive was observed in most of the serum indices of the birds. Cholesterol, triglycerides, very low density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, aspartate amino transferase and alanine amino transferase of turkey poults were significantly (P< 0.05) influenced by the dietary treatments. Meanwhile, least values of cholesterol (97.15mg/dl) and low density lipoprotein (47.40mg/dl) were recorded for birds fed synbiotic and probiotic supplemented diets respectively which were similar to that of birds on antibiotic supplemented diet. The results suggest that probiotic and synbiotic supplementation could be effectively used as alternative to antibiotics to boost the immune response of turkey poults with reduced serum cholesterol. These feed additives could therefore be introduced as a safe and natural alternative to antibiotic growth promoters in turkey diets.