RESPONSE OF BROILER CHICKENS ORALLY ADMINISTERED VARYING LEVELS OF UNDILUTED GINGER (Zingiber officinale) EXTRACT

Abstract

The study was conducted to evaluate the response of broiler chickens orally administered varying levels of undiluted ginger extract. A total of 200 day-old broiler chicks in completely randomized design arrangement were used for the experiment. The chicks were allotted randomly into five treatments, T1 (control group without commercial antibiotic and undiluted ginger extract), T2 (commercial antibiotics oxytetracycline (0.5g/l) alone as positive control) T3 (0.50mls concentrated ginger juice), T4 (1.00mls concentrated ginger juice) and T5 (1.50mls undiluted ginger extract). Each treatment was replicated four times, with 10 birds par replicate. The undiluted ginger extract was orally administered to the birds weekly .Parameters measured were feed intake, body weight,body weight gain and feed conversion ratio of the broiler birds. The results showed that the broilers orally administered varying levels of undiluted ginger extract significantly (P<0.05)had effect on feed intake(T1 and T2 were 4159.10g and 4066.57g respectively whileT3,T4 and T5 were4266.28g, 4507.96g and4593.21g respectively),body weight(T1 and T2 were 2325g and 2200g respectively while T3,T4 and T5 were2425g, 2500g and 2592g respectively) and body weight gain(T1 and T2 had 304.25 and 269.23 respectively while T3,T4 and T5 had 283.81g,315.95g and 318.24g respectively) while feed conversion ratio were not significantly affected (P>0.05). It was concluded that orally administered undiluted ginger extract to broiler chicken at 1.5ml, improved the performance of the broilerbirds