Effects of dietary garlic addition on productive performance and blood lipid profile of broiler chickens

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of dietary garlic powder addition on productive performance and blood lipid status of broiler chicken. At the beginning of experiment, three treatments of 150 one day old broiler chickens of hybrid line Hubbard per treatment, on a total of 450 chickens were formed. Every treatment was divided in four groups which represents four replicates of the experiment. Control treatment (T1) was fed with mixtures without addition of garlic powder, while experimental treatments were fed with addition of 0.5% (T2) and 1.0% (T3) of dietary garlic powder, respectively. Experiment lasted 42 days. After the completion of experimental period the highest achieved body weight of chicken was at treatment T2 (2371.1g) which was followed by treatment T3 (2336.1 g) with statistically significant differences (p<0.05) compared to control treatment. For the entire experimental period, feed conversion ratio was lowest in treatment T2 (1.8 kg/kg) and the highest in control treatment T1 (2.1 kg/kg), without statistically significant (p>0.05) differences. Addition of garlic powder led to a statistically significant (p<0.05) increase in values of EBI in compare to a control treatment T1. The highest mortality rate (5.1 %) and the lowest EBI (220.4 %) were recorded in control treatment. Addition of garlic powder in the amount of 1.0% (T3) significantly (p<0.05) decreased LDL concentrations in blood serum. The lowest concentration of total cholesterol was recorded at treatment T2 (p<0.05). The highest concentration of HDL (44.8 and 39.6 mg/dl) was recorded in treatments T3 and T2. It could be concluded that the addition of garlic has positive influence on chicken production and blood lipid status, but the further investigation of their mode of action is still necessary.