EFFECTS OF NEGRO PEPPER, GINGER AND GARLIC AS FEED ADDITIVES ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE, SERUM BIOCHEMICAL AND HEMATOLOGICAL RESPONSES OF BROILER CHICKENS

Abstract

A feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the performance and physiological characteristic of broiler chickens fed Negro pepper, ginger and garlic as additives in broiler diets for eight weeks. One hundred and twenty (120) day old broiler chicks were randomly allocated to four dietary treatments, replicated thrice with 10 birds per replicate in a completely randomized design experiment. A balanced diet of the same nutritional composition was partitioned into 4, such that diet 1 contains a zero-additive while diets 2, 3, 4 contain 1% of Negro pepper, ginger, garlic additives, respectively. The usage of the test ingredients had no significant (P>0.05) effects on feed conversion ratio (FCR) but had the best numerical value of 2.03 on Negro pepper fed broiler chickens. Moreover, chickens fed diets containing Negro pepper had significantly (P<0.05) higher total weight gains (1821.37g) compared to those fed the control and garlic and ginger supplemented diets. A significant (P<0.05) variation existed among treatment means with haematological parameters and serum biochemical indices in basophils, heterophils, lymphocyte, monocyte, white blood cell, platelet, aspartate, alanine transferase, albumin, total protein, globulin, urea and creatinine. It was therefore concluded that there is substantial benefits of Negro pepper, as phyto-additives in the broiler performance and wellbeing without any adverse effect.