Influence of dietary inclusion of phytobiotics on growth performance, carcass and organ weight of broiler chickens

Abstract

This study investigated the dietary inclusion effect of three Phytobiotics: Syzygium aromaticum (Cloves), Piper nigrum (Black pepper) and Tetrapleura tetraptera (Prekese) on performance, carcass traits and organ weight of broile rchickens. Two hundred-day old unsexed broilers were used for the study. The birds were allotted on weight equalization basis to four dietary treatments (T1, T2, T3 and T4) in Completely Randomized Design. Each treatment was replicated five times with 10 birds per replicate. Four experimental diets were formulated for each of starter and finisher phase respectively. Control diet (T1) with no phytogenic inclusion while T2, T3 and T4 were formulated with inclusion of 1% Syzygium aromaticum (Cloves), Piper nigrum (Black pepper) and Tetrapleura tetraptera (Prekese) respectively; and the experiment lasted for 8 weeks (4weeks for each phase). Feed intake, Weight gained and Feed conversion ratio were measured at starter and finisher phases while carcass and organ weight measurements were carried out at the end of finisher phase. Dietary inclusion of phytogenics recorded similar (P>0.05) values of growth performance parameters at starter phase whereas a significant ((P<0.05) effect were observed on weight gain, FCR, Live weight and plucked weight at finisher phase. It was observed that inclusion of cloves had improvement on final weight (FW), weight gain (WG) and FCR with higher (P<0.05) plucked weight.