Blood profile of starter broiler chickens fed diet containing leaf meal composite as alternative to commercial broiler premix

Abstract

The need to explore and harness the potentials of green vegetable plants as part replacement for the more expensive conventional vitamin-mineral premix is of great importance. One hundred and eighty starter broiler chickens were used in a four-week experiment to determine the effect of varying levels of Leaf Meal Composite (LMC) as an alternative to vitamin-mineral premix using Telfairia occidentalis, Vernonia amygdalina, Piper quinenses and Ipomea batata on the growth, haematology, and serum biochemical profile of starter broiler chickens. The chicks were allocated to six dietary treatments each having thirty birds, replicated thrice with ten birds each in a Completely Randomized Design. The composite leaf meal was blended at the ratio 1:1:1:1 and inclusion level was 0.00 (0.25% premix), 0.125 (0.125% premix), 0.063 (0.0% premix), 0.125 (0.0% premix), 0.188 (0.0% premix) and 0.25% (0.0% premix) at the expense of a commercial premix and designated diets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 respectively.Treatment one (T1) served as the control. The birds were weighed on a weekly basis. At the 4th week of the experiment, blood samples were collected from one bird randomly selected from each replicate per treatment for the evaluation of haematological and serum parameters. Data was obtained for analysis. The growth performance result reveals that the Average Daily Feed Intake (ADFI), Average Daily Weight Gain (ADWG), Total Feed Intake (TFI) and Final Body Weight (FBW) were all significantly (P<0.05) affected by the dietary treatments. Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) was not significantly (P>0.05) different among all treatment groups including the control, although, the control was numerically lower than T2, T3 and T6 while T4 and T5 were lower than the control. The blood profile result reveals that the LMC was not toxic to the birds, had superior disease fighting ability and were not anaemic. All the treatment levels were significant for mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH) and mean cell haemoglobin concentration, (MCHC). aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) reduced with increasing concentration of LMC, the test material was not toxic to the liver. Total Globulin and Glucose level reduced with increasing concentration of LMC. Leaf meal is effective in reducing fat deposition. It can be concluded conceivably within the limit of this study that this leaf meal composite had no detrimental effect on the growth, haematology and serum biochemical profile of starter broiler chicken and can be used to replace commercial Vitamin-Mineral premix. Hence, LMC could help to stem over dependence of broiler farmers on importation of commercial Vitamin-Mineral premix.