GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF BROILER STARTER CHICKS FED DIETS CONTAINING DIFFERENT LEVELS OF AQUEOUS Boswellia dalzielli ROOT EXTRACTS

Abstract

One hundred and sixty 1-day-old (Cobb 500) unsexed broiler chicks were used to examine the growth performance of broiler starter fed diets having different levels of aqueous Boswellia dalzielli root extracts (BDRE). Birds were randomly allocated into four treatments with four replicates of 10 birds in a completely randomized design. Treatment 1 (basal diet + 2g avilamycin /litre of water), treatment 2 (basal diet + 20 mL BDRE per liter of water), treatment 3 (basal diet + 40 mL BDRE per liter of water), and treatment 4 (basal diet + 60 mL BDRE per liter of water). Feed and water were provided ad libitum throughout the experiment which lasted for 28 days. Data collected were used to examine the growth performance (average daily weight gain (ADWG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), feed conversion ratio, mortality) and gas chromatography –mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Result on GC-MS analysis of BDRE revealed the presence of 18 bioactive compounds that accounted for 98.75 % of the extract. The major compounds identified in the extract were: gallic acid (21.67 %), α-cubebene (18.49 %), ethylgallate (15.35 %) and carvenone (10.11 %) other compounds found were less than 10 %. Average daily weight gain was significantly (P ˂0.05) different among the treatments. Feeding birds BDRE based diets from 20 mL to 60 mL/liters increased the average daily feed intake though not significantly (P ˃0.05). Highest mortality was recorded in T1 with (2.05 %) followed by T2 (1.00 %) and none was recorded in the other treatments (P ˂0.05). It was concluded that BDRE based diets could be fed to broilers up to 60 mL per liter of water without causing any negative effect on the performance of birds.