Combined Effects of Garlic, Ginger, Scent leaf and Seed under Leaf Meals on Performance and Blood Parameters Quality of Broiler Chickens
The research compared the effects of dietary supplementation of garlic, ginger, scent leaf and seed under leaf meals to growth performance, haematology, serum biochemistry and carcass characteristics of broiler chicken. A randomized design of five treatments with three replicas of three hundred (300) day old Cobb 500 broiler chicks was used in a completely randomized design. The Treatment 1 was used as control (no supplementation), Treatment 2, 3, 4 and 5 were fed 25g each of different combinations of garlic, ginger, scent leaf and seed-under-leaf meals per 25kg of popular commercial feed. Monitoring of performance parameters in growth performance parameters was carried out weekly. On day 42, haematological and serum biochemical samples were taken from three birds of each replicate after slaughtering and the carcass evaluated. Data collected were subjected to One way analysis of variance. It was found that final weight, weight gain, daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio (FCR) significantly varied (p<0.05) between treatments. Treatment 3 (garlic + seed-under-leaf + scent leaf) had the highest final weight (2262.96±64.01g) and weight gain (2086.10±62.94g) and best FCR (1.87±0.01) whilst control birds had the lowest performance. Displayed was no significant difference in feed intake (p>0.05). Haematological parameters were in the normal ranges of physiological processes, except the lymphocyte count that varied significantly (p<0.01). Biochemistry analysis of serum biochemistry demonstrated statistically significant differences (p<0.05) in the total protein, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and creatinine with Treatment 5 (garlic + ginger + seed-under-leaf) demonstrating significantly high values. Dietary treatments did not have a significant effect (p>0.05) on carcass characteristics and organ weights. Adding 25g/kg of garlic, seed-under-leaf and scent leaf (Treatment 3) in the diet enhanced the growth performance and feed efficiency without any negative impact on haematology, serum biochemistry and carcass characteristics, and should be proposed as phytogenic feed additive to broiler production.
Keywords: Phytogenic feed additives, broiler chickens, growth performance, serum biochemistry, haematology, carcass characteristics
