Potential influence of dietary synbiotic and fenugreek seed to improve the productive traits and economic cost in stressed broiler chickens

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the use powders of local synbiotic and fenugreek seeds as antioxidants in the broiler diet against the experimentally stimulated stress by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in drinking water and its influence on productive traits and economic cost up to 5 weeks old. In total, 300 one-day-old chicks were used, chicks were randomly distributed into five treatments, each treatment contained 60 chicks with 3 replicates/group. The treatments were divided into 1st treatment (T1) which involved the chicks fed a diet without any additives as negative control whereas 2n treatment (T2) involved the chicks which were subjected to stress by 1 ml (0.5%) of H2O2 per 1 L of drinking water as positive control. In 3th, 4th and 5th treatments, the chicks were subjected to stress by H2O2 and fed 0.5% of synbiotic (T3), 0.5% of fenugreek (T4) and mixture of 0.25% each of synbiotic and fenugreek (T5), respectively. The results of the research indicated that T3, T4 and T5 caused a significant increase (P<0.05) in the mean body weight, cumulative weight gain and relative growth rate with high significance (P<0.01) in cumulative feed intake and production efficiency factor compared to T2. Also, the same treatments recorded highly significant superiority (P<0.01) in cumulative feed conversion ratio and high (P<0.01) dressing percentage without giblets and with giblets. Moreover, T3, T4 and T5 decreased the economic cost of the broiler rearing project. Thus, we recommended to using both powders of local synbiotic and fenugreek seed or their combination as promising antistress dietary materials for improving the productivity and reducing the economic cost of broilers. This will in turn support the prospects of sustainable development in the globally poultry industry in future directions.