COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FEEDING PROBIOTIC (A-MAX® ) AND GROWTH PROMOTER ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BROILER

Abstract

An experiment was conducted with 120 Cobb-500 Broiler day old chicks to evaluate the effect of feeding probiotic (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) with or without growth promoter (GP). Birds were reared in an open sided shed type house. Body weight and feed intake were collected and examined on day 0, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 32. The experiment was conducted in a Completely Randomized Design. One hundred twenty Cobb-500 day-old chicks were randomly distributed into four dietary groups having three replications. The number of birds in each replication was 10. Four diets were considered: control; probiotic (PB) at a level of 1ml/liter; GP at a level of 100g/50kg and GP plus PB (1ml/liter+ 100g/50kg). The records on kept of body weight, feed intake and mortality while weight gain, feed efficiency (FE) and survivability were calculated. Temperature and humidity were recorded four times daily. One broiler that was very close to the average of pen weight was sacrificed from each replication at the end of the experiment to determine carcass characteristics. Broiler chicks that received PB and a combination of PB+GP treatments showed significant improvement in performance (p<0.01) over control with respect to body weight gain, feed efficiency, carcass yield and costeffectiveness. Feeding GP alone had comparatively less weight gain, net profit and almost similar feed efficiency compared with PB and GP+PB groups but it’s performance was significantly better than that of control group. This study indicated that the diet containing GP+PB offered slightly increased benefits to the growth performance of broilers, and these benefits were almost equal to the PB. It is revealed that probiotic (A-MAX) supplementation with growth promoter is beneficial for broiler production and no hazard on human health.