PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS AND SERUM BIOCHEMICAL INDICES OF BROILER CHICKEN FED GARLIC (ALLIUM SATIVUM) POWDER BASED DIET

Abstract

A 56 days study was conducted to determine the effect of garlic powder (GP) supplementation on growth performance and serum biochemical indices of broiler chicken. A total of 150 day old broiler chicks, were performance randomly allotted into four (4) treatment groups with three replicates, each replicate consisted of 12 birds in a completely randomized design. Four (4) diets were formulated to contain 0, 1, 10g/kg GP and these were designated as D1, D2, D3 and D4 respectively. Data were collected based on feed intake, weight gain, feed conversion ratio and serum biochemical indices of broiler chicken. Results showed that, GP based diet significantly (P<0.05) influenced the feed conversion ratio across the dietary treatments as birds in D2 (1g/kg GP) recorded the best FCR (1.64) values. Serum biochemical indices of broiler chicken observed in this study increased across the dietary treatments as the GP inclusion levels increased. Birds fed 5g/kg and 10g/kg GPM based diet recorded the highest total protein (13.66 and 14.13mg/dL) and globulin (4.10 and 4.23mg/dL) values. GP supplementation groups had significantly (P<0.05) higher albumin values compared with those on D1. It can be concluded that the garlic powder supplemented at 1g/kg in the diet of broiler chicken gave optimal performance and improved serum biochemical indices of broiler chicken.