Effect of three proprietary growth promoters on performance, carcass characteristics and gut integrity of broilers

Abstract

A six-week feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect of prebiotics and probiotics on the performance, carcass characteristics and gut integrity of broiler chickens. Two hundred and fifty one-day-old unsexed Arbor-acre broiler chicks were randomly allocated into 5 treatment groups of 5 replicates with 10 birds per replicate. A corn-soyabean meal based diet with no prebiotic or probiotic supplement was the control diet (basal diet). Other diets consisted the basal diet with 0.01% antibiotics, 0.06% probiotics (Bio grow promoter), 0.1% probiotics (Gro up) and 0.2% prebiotics. On day 42, birds were weighed and sacrificed by cutting the jugular vein. The weights of the primal cuts and visceral organs were taken and recorded. After flushing out the digesta samples, sections of the ileum (5cm posterior to Meckel’s diverticulum) were removed for ileal morphological measurements. There was no significant difference (P>0.05) on weight of the primal cuts except for head, back and drumsticks which were significantly (P<0.05) improved across the diets. Diets supplemented with probiotics had higher weight of drumsticks (11.21%) than other treatments. Significant (P<0.05) difference was however observed in the weight gain with 0.06% probiotics and 0.1% probiotics having the highest means of 1218.15g and 1163.68g respectively. Supplementation with probiotics or prebiotics had no effect on growth performance, gut morphology and organ weights at the grower phase. It was observed, that birds fed with the two brands of probiotics used had the highest villus height and width than birds fed on other treatments. In summary, dietary inclusion of probiotics had a growth-promoting effect with improved growth performance and intestinal morphology.  Probiotic could therefore serve as an alternative growth promoter to antibiotics.