Dietary Effect of Garlic, Synbiotic and Organic Acidifier on Growth and Reproductive Performance of Layer Chickens
The movement worldwide to abandon the use of antibiotics in poultry production has led to a search to find natural alternatives. The aim of the research was to investigate the impact of the dietary supplementation of a commercial pullet basal diet containing: garlic powder (0.3%), a commercial synbiotic (0.025%), an organic acidifier (0.1%), and a synthetic antibiotic (0.1%) on the growth and laying performance of commercial pullets. A population of 240 pullets (12 weeks old) was assigned to 5 dietary treatments in a fully randomized study (four replicates in each diet treatment). Measures of performance parameters were done in three stages, which are grower (12 16 weeks), early lay (18 30 weeks), and mid-lay (30 42 weeks). One-way ANOVA was used to analyse the data. The only stage in which feed intake was significantly (p<0.05) influenced was in the grower stage where the synbiotic and organic acidifier groups went at high feed intake, whereas garlic supplementation did not affect body weight negatively. At early lay, the egg weight was the most in the garlic group and the weight of first-egg the most in synbiotic group. There was decreased feed intake with organic acidifier and antibiotic treatment as compared to control. The paper finds that garlic and synbiotics have the potential to promote the quality of eggs and their metabolic performance at critical transition phases, and a balanced basal diet is able to maintain performance in the longer term.
Keyword: Egg weight, feed intake, laying birds, nutrient efficiency
