Metabolic Effects of Beneficial Bacterial, Herbal Plant and Antibiotic as Feed Additives on Production of Broiler Chicken

Abstract

The contribution of natural products as growth promoters as a major causative mechanism for limiting antibiotic growth promoter has been considered recently. It was found that this strategy contributed to the increase of the growth and development of poultry production, as a result, to an increase in the growth efficiency and reduction of the antibiotic as growth promoters. The aim of our study was to analyze whether the use  natural growth promoters as antibiotic replacement can increase the broiler's growth.

We analyzed the effect of probiotic, Spearmint leaves powder as replacement to Antibiotic in diet of broiler chicks on growth production. Total 240 female broiler chicks at one day old were housed ,designed into four experimental treatments with 3 replicated pens (20chicks per replicated pen) according to a completely randomized design. The experimental treatments were named G1: either basal feed only, G2: basal feed plus 2 % probiotic ( “Lactobacillus spp kkp 529/p^® (“probiotic containing on Lactobacillus plantarum, 1.0 × 106 cfu/g”), G3: Basal feed plus  0.4 g/kg oxytetracycline,  G4: basal feed plus Spearmint leaves powder 2g /kg feed for 6 weeks.

There were no statistically significant differences between the treatments on the body weight (BW), final feed consumption(FI), final feed conversion ratio(FCR), and body weight gain(BWG). The ratio of dressings and the relative weight of some organs were not affected with all treatments, but the weight of the gizzard and the weight of Proventriculus in the Spearmint treatment were significantly increased (P< 0.05) compared with other treatments. In conclusion, the effect of probiotics and Spearmint powder in broiler’s feed were similar to antibiotic growth promoter effect, so that they could be significantly administrated as growth promoters.