Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Department of Poultry Science, College of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The present experiment was carried out to determine the effects of barley-based diet supplied with probiotic, medicinal plant and antibiotic on performance, blood factor, and broiler's SRBC criteria as means to assess immune response. Three hundred and twenty day-old male broiler chicks were allocated to a randomized complete blocks design with 4 treatments consisting of 4 replications for 42 days. Experiment treatments were included: 1) basal diet with 20% barley (barley control), 2) barley control + probiotic Galpro, 3) barley control + medicinal plant Antibiophen, and 4) barley control + antibiotic virginiamycin. In addition, basal diet supplemented with commercial enzyme preparation. Body weight (BW), feed intake (FI), feed conversion ratio (FCR), blood cholesterol and triglyceride and SRBC, as criteria of immune system response were the measured parameters. Analysis of the experiment showed significant differences within treatments for 42 day-old body weight, as antibiotic treatment had the highest BW and control barely showed the lowest BW. Among treatments, significant differences were found in FCR for the whole duration of the experiment (P<0.05). Not significant differences in FI were noted among treatments during experiment. The FCR was highest in the barley plus enzyme group, but not much different for other treatment groups. Stimulating of immunity system was determined with sheep erythrocytes in two stages. Antibody titer against sheep erythrocytes in groups fed with probiotic and medicinal plant were more than other groups (P<0.05). Cholestrol and triglyceride levels of serume were affected by treatments; medicinal plants had resulted to lowest cholesterol level and antibiotic caused highest triglyceride level. It could be concluded that diet supplementation of broiler chicken with medicinal plant and probiotic as compared with antibiotic offset the negative effect of barley inclusion.
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