Dietary Effect of Antibiotic Growth Promoter and Essential Oil on Growth Performance, Carcass Traits and Some Physiological Indicators in Broilers

Abstract

In this bioassay, we assessed the comparative effect of antibiotic growth promoter(AGP) and of essential oil (EO) addition on the growth performance, carcass traits, and some physiological indicators in the male Ross 308 broilers. A total of 90 healthy chicks (1 day of age) were randomly allocated to three groups, each comprising 6 replicates of 5 chicks. The first group was a control without any additive in water or feed, the second one was offered a drinking water with 0.5 g/l/day of antibiotic, and the third one was supplied a drinking water with 0.5 ml/liter of EO. In this study, neither AGP nor EO supplementation affected BW, BWG, FI, and FCR (p < /em> < 0.05) compared with those fed the control diet group. AGP and EO supplemented diets had no significant effect on the carcass, breast and thigh muscles, liver, gizzard, heart spleen, and abdominal fat weight (p < /em> < 0.05). All the blood plasma concentrations under this study were not affected (p < /em> < 0.05) by AGP and EO supplementations compared to the untreated control group. In conclusion, it seems that there were no significant differences between the use of AGP or EO supplementation compared with the control group. Therefore, finding from this study demonstrated that essential oil (EO) could be used as a substitute for colistin antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) for broilers, and it’s the best strategic way to achieve healthy hygiene meat production free of antibiotic residues.